1/1/2020 8:00 AMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1486458228171434
1/1/2020 10:00 AMT10
1/1/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10157005131803951
1/1/2020 2:00 PMDanish scientists have managed to extract a complete human DNA sample from a piece of birch pitch more than 5,000 years old, used as a kind of chewing gum, a study revealed.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-flavour-stone-age-chewing-gum-yields-human.html
1/1/2020 4:00 PMInfrared cameras detect people and other objects by the heat they emit. Now, researchers have discovered the uncanny ability of a material to hide a target by masking its telltale heat properties.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-camouflage-quantum-material-infrared-cameras.html
1/1/2020 6:00 PMScientists have captured the birth of a high-speed ice feature for the first time on top of a Russian glacier.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-ice-river-arctic-glacier-seas.html
1/2/2020 8:00 AMThe aquatic larvae of the net-winged midge have the unique ability to move around at ease on rocks in torrential rivers using super-strong suction organs. Powerful modern imaging techniques have now revealed the structure of these organs in intricate detail, providing an insight into how they work so reliably. The findings, reported in the journal BMC Zoology, may inform the development of better man-made suction cups that perform well on a variety of surfaces.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-suction-cups-dont-fall.html
1/2/2020 10:00 AMT10
1/2/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10157007666728951
1/2/2020 2:00 PMMany microbes wear beautifully patterned crystalline shells, which protect them from a harsh world and can even help them reel in food. Studies at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have revealed this food-reeling process and shown how shells assemble themselves from protein building blocks.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-scientists-proteins-crystals-tile-microbe.html
1/2/2020 4:00 PMParticles can sometimes act like waves, and photons (particles of light) are no exception. Just as waves create an interference pattern, like ripples on a pond, so do photons. Physicists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues have achieved a major new feat—creating a bizarre “quantum” interference between two photons of markedly different colors, originating from different buildings on the University of Maryland campus.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-scientists-photon-pairs.html
1/2/2020 6:00 PMDo supermassive black holes have friends? The nature of galaxy formation suggests that the answer is yes, and in fact, pairs of supermassive black holes should be common in the universe.https://www.space.com/supermassive-black-hole-hiding-milky-way.html
1/3/2020 8:00 AMFootprints discovered over 40 years ago in rocks from Yorkshire have been revealed as potentially the earliest prints from an amphibian yet discovered in the UK, and are potentially the oldest from any four-legged animal.https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2019/december/fossils-found-in-yorkshire-are-the-oldest-amphibian-footprints.html
1/3/2020 10:00 AMT10
1/3/2020 12:00 PMFor decades, mountain gorillas have been subjected to uncontrolled hunting, disease, habitat loss and the ravages of human conflict. Their numbers plummeted, and they are now considered endangered. But as George Dvorsky of Gizmodo reports, there is encouraging news for these great primates. A new survey has found that the mountain gorilla population has risen to 1,063 confirmed individuals—still a disconcertingly low number, but a sign that conservation efforts are working.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/endangered-mountain-gorilla-populations-are-growing-180973808/?
1/3/2020 2:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/NASA/videos/540473090127428/
1/3/2020 4:00 PMPhosphine is among the stinkiest, most toxic gases on Earth, found in some of the foulest of places, including penguin dung heaps, the depths of swamps and bogs, and even in the bowels of some badgers and fish. This putrid “swamp gas” is also highly flammable and reactive with particles in our atmosphere.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-smelly-poisonous-molecule-sure-fire-extraterrestrial.html
1/3/2020 6:00 PMPhase transitions have long been of crucial importance to scientific research. The change from water to ice or steam is a simple example. A phase transition important to pioneering research today is that from metal to insulator in materials referred to as “correlated oxides.” Scientists have reaped many insights into phenomena like superconductivity and magnetism by studying what happens when a correlated oxide that conducts electricity with little or no resistance (metallike) changes to one that does not (insulator) as a result of changes in temperature, pressure, or other external fields.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-materials-theory-relevant-ultrafast-electronics.html
1/4/2020 8:00 AMScientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory are exceptional in many respects. Working in collaboration with the Imperial College London, for example, they have conducted research on a phenomenon in information processing systems called “exceptional points.” This phenomenon has found applications in microwave, optical and mechanical technologies.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-scientists-exceptional-surface.html
1/4/2020 10:00 AMT10
1/4/2020 12:00 PMWe live in Carl Sagan’s universe–awesomely vast, deeply humbling. It’s a universe that, as Sagan reminded us again and again, isn’t about us. We’re a granular element. Our presence may even be ephemeral—a flash of luminescence in a great dark ocean. Or perhaps we are here to stay, somehow finding a way to transcend our worst instincts and ancient hatreds, and eventually become a galactic species. We could even find others out there, the inhabitants of distant, highly advanced civilizations—the Old Ones, as Sagan might put it.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-carl-sagan-truly-irreplaceable-180949818/
1/4/2020 2:00 PMA team of mathematicians from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Brown University has discovered a new phenomenon that generates a fluidic force capable of moving and binding particles immersed in density-layered fluids. The breakthrough offers an alternative to previously held assumptions about how particles accumulate in lakes and oceans and could lead to applications in locating biological hotspots, cleaning up the environment and even in sorting and packing.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-fundamental-underwater.html
1/4/2020 4:00 PMThe Earth’s inner core is hot, under immense pressure and snow-capped, according to new research that could help scientists better understand forces that affect the entire planet. The snow is made of tiny particles of iron—much heavier than any snowflake on Earth’s surface—that fall from the molten outer core and pile on top of the inner core, creating piles up to 200 miles thick that cover the inner core.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-scientists-iron-earth-core.html
1/4/2020 6:00 PMA critically endangered toad belonging to one of the most threatened groups of amphibians in the world has been documented by scientists for the first time in 30 years.https://www.newsweek.com/spectacular-starry-night-harlequin-toad-lost-science-1476978
1/5/2020 8:00 AMEarth’s magnetic north pole, which has been wandering faster than expected in recent years, has now crossed the prime meridian.https://www.space.com/earth-magnetic-north-passes-prime-meridian.html
1/5/2020 10:00 AMT10
1/5/2020 12:00 PMFarmers could soon be growing tomatoes bunched like grapes in a storage unit, on the roof of a skyscraper, or even in space. That’s if a clutch of new gene-edited crops prove as fruitful as the first batch.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-tomato-ideal-urban-gardens-outer.html
1/5/2020 2:00 PMA European team of researchers including physicists from the University of Konstanz has found a way of transporting electrons at times below the femtosecond range by manipulating them with light. This could have major implications for the future of data processing and computing.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-electronics.html
1/5/2020 4:00 PMScientists from the University of Bristol, in collaboration with the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), have successfully developed chip-scale devices that are able to harness the applications of quantum physics by generating and manipulating single particles of light within programmable nanoscale circuits.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-chip-to-chip-quantum-teleportation-harnessing-silicon.html
1/5/2020 6:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=457162308306191
1/6/2020 8:00 AMStarting in 536 A.D., the sky went dark for more than a year. In some parts of Europe and Asia, the sun only shone for about four hours a day, and “accounts say the sun gave no more light than the moon,” says Dallas Abbott, who studies paleoclimate and extraterrestrial impacts at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-undersea-volcanism-medieval-year-darkness.html
1/6/2020 10:00 AMT10
1/6/2020 12:00 PMSkywatchers from Saudi Arabia and Oman to India and Singapore were treated to a “ring of fire” solar eclipse Thursday, December 26th.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-eclipse-wows-asia.html
1/6/2020 2:00 PMPrinceton researchers have uncovered new rules governing how objects absorb and emit light, fine-tuning scientists’ control over light and boosting research into next-generation solar and optical devices.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-illuminate-absorb-emit.html
1/6/2020 4:00 PMIn this age of “big data,” artificial intelligence (AI) has become a valuable ally for scientists. Machine learning algorithms, for instance, are helping biologists make sense of the dizzying number of molecular signals that control how genes function. But as new algorithms are developed to analyze even more data, they also become more complex and more difficult to interpret. Quantitative biologists Justin B. Kinney and Ammar Tareen have a strategy to design advanced machine learning algorithms that are easier for biologists to understand.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-machine-gene.html
1/6/2020 6:00 PMRats have mastered the art of driving a tiny car, suggesting that their brains are more flexible than we thought. The finding could be used to understand how learning new skills relieves stress and how neurological and psychiatric conditions affect mental capabilities.https://www.newscientist.com/article/2220721-scientists-have-trained-rats-to-drive-tiny-cars-to-collect-food/
1/7/2020 8:00 AMParker Solar Probe launched in August 2018, destined to spend seven years looping ever closer to the sun in hopes of sorting out some of the hottest mysteries about our star. But to do so, the spacecraft needed a carefully choreographed trajectory, one that included seven flybys of Earth’s evil twin, Venus. And Venus scientists, who haven’t had a dedicated NASA spacecraft since the mid-1990s, were not about to let that opportunity fly past them.https://www.space.com/parker-solar-probe-venus-flyby-observations-december-2019.html
1/7/2020 10:00 AMT10
1/7/2020 12:00 PMThe star Betelgeuse comprises the shoulder of the constellation Orion, and its abrupt change in brightness hints that it may be on the brink of death. If this star is indeed at the end of its life, it will not go gently into that good night. Before Betelgeuse blips out for good, it will explode in a supernova—a violent stellar cataclysm that could outshine the moon and make it visible even in daylight.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/giant-star-betelgeuse-dimming-sign-it-could-explode-180973861/
1/7/2020 2:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2848022041916849
1/7/2020 4:00 PMFresh findings about the edge of Earth’s atmosphere are puzzling scientists affiliated with two missions that launched this year, and then some. This zone, at an altitude of roughly 50 to 400 miles (80 to 645 kilometers), is full of strange physical phenomena that scientists are only beginning to understand. In the ionosphere, charged particles released by the sun interact with gases at the top of Earth’s atmosphere in intriguing ways.https://www.space.com/ionosphere-science-roundup.html
1/7/2020 6:00 PMDr. Merritt Moore — a quantum physicist and professional ballerin — graduated with Magna Cum Laude Honors in Physics from Harvard and recently graduated with a PhD in Atomic and Laser Physics from the University of Oxford. At the same time, her professional ballet career has seen her dance with the Zurich Ballet, Boston Ballet, English National Ballet, and Norwegian National Ballet.https://medium.com/@daniellenewnham/interview-with-quantum-physicist-and-pro-ballerina-dr-merritt-moore-23862cbb4e64
1/8/2020 8:00 AMOnly four spacecraft ever launched are currently on their way out of the solar system – Pioneer 10 and 11, and Voyager 1 and 2 – and now we know which one will pass by another star system first. (hint – it’s Pioneer 10, and it’ll pass by star system HIP 117795 in about 90,000 years). Altogether, the four probes will pass by approximately 60 star systems in the next one million years, and about 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 years before they’ve all collided with or are captured by a star system.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-spacecraft-star.html
1/8/2020 10:00 AMT10
1/8/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1510654018949544
1/8/2020 2:00 PMThe tail of a feathered dinosaur has been found perfectly preserved in amber from Myanmar. The one-of-a-kind discovery helps put flesh on the bones of these extinct creatures, opening a new window on the biology of a group that dominated Earth for more than 160 million years.https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38224564
1/8/2020 4:00 PMIf the thought of sipping a beer is gag-inducing, you’re not alone. But even if you’re in good company, it begs the question: Why do some people hate the taste of beer? The answer comes down to genetics, which influences how our brains process bitter-tasting and cold beverages.https://www.livescience.com/63039-why-hate-bitter-beer-taste.html
1/8/2020 6:00 PMMany human languages have words for emotions such as “anger” and “fear,” yet it is not clear whether these emotions have similar meanings across languages, or why their meanings might vary.https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6472/1517
1/9/2020 8:00 AMNew research suggests forces pulling on Earth’s surface as the planet spins may trigger earthquakes and eruptions at volcanoes.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-earth-earthquakes-volcanic-eruptions-mount.html
1/9/2020 10:00 AMT10
1/9/2020 12:00 PMIn a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Saint Louis University researchers report new information about conditions that can cause Earth’s tectonic plates to sink.http://www.geologypage.com/2016/11/geologists-discover-tectonic-plate-sank.html
1/9/2020 2:00 PMLupus can be a stubborn disease to treat. Although many struck by the autoimmune condition live relatively normal lives, some suffer from kidney failure, blood clots, and other complications that can be deadly. Now, scientists have found that a novel treatment that wipes out the immune system’s B cells cures mice of the condition. Though the work is preliminary, it has excited researchers because it uses a therapy already approved for people with blood cancer.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/03/genetically-engineered-immune-cells-wipe-out-lupus-mice
1/9/2020 4:00 PMThe North Atlantic Current transports warm water from the Gulf of Mexico towards Europe, providing much of north-western Europe with a relatively mild climate. However, scientists suspect that meltwater from Greenland and excessive rainfall could interfere with this ocean current. Simulations by scientists from the University of Groningen and Utrecht University showed that it is unlikely that the current will come to a complete stop, due to small and rapid changes in precipitation over the North Atlantic. However, there is a 15 percent likelihood that there will be a temporary change in the current in the next 100 years.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-north-atlantic-current-cease-temporarily.html
1/9/2020 6:00 PMUsing data from an especially bright population of stars, astronomers have reconstructed the Milky Way’s peaks and valleys like never before.https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/milky-way-3d-map-cepheids/
1/10/2020 8:00 AMThe small hopping insect Issus coleoptratus uses toothed gears to precisely synchronize the kicks of its hind legs as it jumps forward.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/this-insect-has-the-only-mechanical-gears-ever-found-in-nature-6480908/
1/10/2020 10:00 AMT10
1/10/2020 12:00 PMThe theoretical notion of a ‘quantum heat engine’ has been around for several decades. It was first introduced around sixty years ago by Scovil and Schulz-DuBois, two physicists at Bell Labs who drew an analogy between three-level masers and thermal machines.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-experimental-quantum.html
1/10/2020 2:00 PMScientists from Skoltech and Heriot-Watt University proposed extracting methane by injecting flue gas into permafrost hydrate reservoirs. Since the flue gas contains carbon dioxide, the new technology will also contributes to reduction of this green house gas in the Arctic atmosphere.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-gas-efficiently-methane-permafrost.html
1/10/2020 4:00 PMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exkeE6aIlpc
1/10/2020 6:00 PMAs students, Jussi Lindgren and Jukka Liukkonen had found one element of their quantum mechanics lectures unsatisfying. “When we were taught physics, there were some fundamental elements you were told were true, and you had to accept they were true without it being shown why,” said Jussi Lindgren, “and I didn’t really like this”.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-rewriting-quantum-mechanics.html
1/11/2020 8:00 AMUsing the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array radio telescope, a team of astronomers has captured for the first time an image of large-scale, coherent, magnetic fields in the halo of a faraway spiral galaxy, confirming theoretical modeling of how galaxies generate magnetic fields and potentially increasing knowledge of how galaxies form and evolve.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-giant-magnetic-ropes-whale-galaxy.html
1/11/2020 10:00 AMAuroras paint the sky around the poles when the sun is particularly active, flinging highly charged particles at Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists once thought that the gorgeous events were mirror images, but to their surprise, displays at the north (the aurora borealis) and south (the aurora australis) don’t precisely match.https://www.space.com/43130-northern-lights-auroras-different-in-south.html
1/11/2020 12:00 PMA group of researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Beijing Normal University and Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen has found a way to predict El Niño events up to a year before they occur. In their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their complexity-based approach to better predicting the seemingly random weather events.https://phys.org/news/2019-12-el-nio-event-year.html
1/11/2020 2:00 PMWithout a doubt, Tyrannosaurus rex is the most famous dinosaur in the world. The 40-foot-long predator with bone crushing teeth inside a five-foot long head are the stuff of legend. Now, a look within the bones of two mid-sized, immature T. rex allow scientists to learn about the tyrant king’s terrible teens as well.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-teen-age-trex.html
1/11/2020 4:00 PMWhat freshwater turtle has no shell, lives in southeast Asia, and can grow as much as 6 feet (2 meters) long? Meet the Asian giant softshell turtle (Pelochelys cantorii). Unlike many of its turtle relatives—it has no exterior shell, just a layer of thick rubbery skin covering wide-spanning, fused ribs that protect its internal organs. Its frog-like face adds to its unusual appearance. This reptile can be found in freshwater habitats where it burrows beneath the sand with only its snout poking out. Unfortunately, the species is threatened by loss of its riverine and coastal habitats, as well as by being hunted for its meat and eggs.https://tumblr.amnh.org/post/189913727679/what-freshwater-turtle-has-no-shell-lives-in
1/11/2020 6:00 PMA team of astronomers at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) in Pune, India have discovered a mysterious ring of hydrogen gas around a distant galaxy, using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT). The ring is much bigger than the galaxy it surrounds and has a diameter of about 380,000 light-years (about 4 times that of our Milky Way).https://phys.org/news/2020-01-gmrt-gigantic-hydrogen-gas-distant.html
1/12/2020 8:00 AMOn frigid days, water vapor in the air can transform directly into solid ice, depositing a thin layer on surfaces such as a windowpane or car windshield. Though commonplace, this process is one that has kept physicists and chemists busy figuring out the details for decades.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-thin-ice.html
1/12/2020 10:00 AMNo one really knows what happens inside an atom. But two competing groups of scientists think they’ve figured it out. And both are racing to prove that their own vision is correct.https://www.space.com/mystery-of-proton-neutron-behavior-in-nucleus.html
1/12/2020 12:00 PMOn a hillside above Stanford University, the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory operates a scientific instrument nearly 2 miles long. In this giant accelerator, a stream of electrons flows through a vacuum pipe, as bursts of microwave radiation nudge the particles ever-faster forward until their velocity approaches the speed of light, creating a powerful beam that scientists from around the world use to probe the atomic and molecular structures of inorganic and biological materials.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-particle-chip.html
1/12/2020 2:00 PM“The inhabitants of the Border Cave in the Lebombo Mountains on the Kwazulu-Natal/eSwatini border were cooking starchy plants 170 thousand years ago,” says Professor Lyn Wadley, a scientist from the Wits Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa (Wits ESI). “This discovery is much older than earlier reports for cooking similar plants and it provides a fascinating insight into the behavioural practices of early modern humans in southern Africa. It also implies that they shared food and used wooden sticks to extract plants from the ground.”https://phys.org/news/2020-01-early-modern-humans-cooked-starchy.html
1/12/2020 4:00 PMIt’s hard to imagine Ohio was once what some would consider a paradise in a vast ocean with tropical weather, considering over 500 million years later we’re landlocked and the weather is as unpredictable as it’s ever been. However, that’s the reality of Ohio’s history — south of the equator, immersed in warm sea water, Ohio supported a variety of marine life. The proof is in the thousands of fossils that can be found in Ohio today.https://www.farmanddairy.com/top-stories/how-to-hunt-for-fossils-in-ohio/592400.html
1/12/2020 6:00 PMFor the first time, researchers have performed a version of the famous double-slit experiment with antimatter particles.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/antimatter-quantum-theory-particle-wave-double-slit-experiment
1/13/2020 8:00 AMA strange, small cone-shaped fossil baffled scientists for a very long time. Now that it has found its family, you’ll never guess its closest living relative.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/conularia-were-the-cone-shaped-weirdos-of-the-paleozoic/
1/13/2020 10:00 AMAt a recent group meeting, my postdoc raised a question: “Should we make our theoretical model more complex so that our explanation of the data will not appear too trivial?” I was surprised by this suggestion and felt obligated to explain why. “Simplicity is a virtue,” I said, “not a deficiency. Excessive mathematical gymnastics is used to show off in branches of theoretical physics that have scarce experimental data. But as physicists, we should seek the simplest explanation for our data. This is the lifeblood of physics and the appropriate measure of success.”https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-simple-truth-about-physics/
1/13/2020 12:00 PMA study led by Kevin Reed, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) at Stony Brook University, and published in Science Advances, found that Hurricane Florence produced more extreme rainfall and was spatially larger due to human-induced climate change.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-climate-impacted-hurricane-florence-precipitation.html
1/13/2020 2:00 PMResearchers at Columbia University and University of California, San Diego, have introduced a novel “multi-messenger” approach to quantum physics that signifies a technological leap in how scientists can explore quantum materials.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-quantum-breakthrough-technique-astronomy-nano-scale.html
1/13/2020 4:00 PMIt’s official: India will try again to land on the moon. The Chandrayaan-3 mission, which will consist of a lunar rover and a stationary lander, has been approved by the Indian government, K. Sivan, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), announced during a news conference Wednesday, January 1, 2020.https://www.space.com/india-confirms-moon-landing-mission-chandrayaan-3.html
1/13/2020 6:00 PMThe title of this article is a bit misleading. This dish in South Africa is just 50 feet wide – nowhere near a square kilometer – but it’s the first of a planned 3,000 such dishes, spread through Botswana, Ghana, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zambia. Collectively, with another station in Australia, they will be known as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA).https://www.wired.com/story/square-kilometre-array-largest-scientific-structure-ever-africa/
1/14/2020 8:00 AMThe global low-carbon revolution could be at risk unless new international agreements and governance mechanisms are put in place to ensure a sustainable supply of rare minerals and metals, a new academic study has warned.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-sustainable-minerals-metals-key-low-carbon.html
1/14/2020 10:00 AMTwo teams of astronomers independently have gotten the first glimpses of the surface of a pulsar, a rapidly spinning neutron star. Newly created maps of that surface reveal a smattering of bright blemishes in the star’s southern hemisphere, hinting at the presence of complex magnetic fields.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/first-glimpses-pulsar-surface-hint-complex-magnetism
1/14/2020 12:00 PMIn sailing, rock climbing, construction, and any activity requiring the securing of ropes, certain knots are known to be stronger than others. Any seasoned sailor knows, for instance, that one type of knot will secure a sheet to a headsail, while another is better for hitching a boat to a piling.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-mathematical-stability.html
1/14/2020 2:00 PMSerena Auñón-Chancellor, M.D., M.P.H., Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine’s branch campus in Baton Rouge, is the lead author of a paper describing a previously unrecognized risk of spaceflight discovered during a study of astronauts involved in long-duration missions. The paper details a case of stagnant blood flow resulting in a clot in the internal jugular vein of an astronaut stationed on the International Space Station.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-occurrence-treatment-spaceflight-medical-miles.html
1/14/2020 4:00 PMIf a meteorite streaking through Earth’s atmosphere is too thin, it’ll tumble about. Too wide and it will flutter wildly. But if it’s taken on just the right cone shape, it’ll plummet straight to the ground.https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/cone-meteorites/
1/14/2020 6:00 PMThe next wave of robots to fly to Mars in 2020 could offer scientists an unprecedented understanding of Earth’s closest neighboring planet. But there are still mysteries to be solved much closer to home, on Earth’s own moon.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-moon-dark-craters.html
1/15/2020 8:00 AMNew research led by Universities Space Research Association (USRA) shows that lava flows on Venus may be only a few years old, suggesting that Venus could be volcanically active today—making it the only planet in our solar system, other than Earth, with recent eruptions.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-scientists-evidence-venus-volcanoes.html
1/15/2020 10:00 AMA first-of-its-kind study on molecular interactions by biomedical engineers in the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering will make it easier and more efficient for scientists to develop new medicines and other therapies for diseases such as cancer, HIV and autoimmune diseases.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-breakthrough-molecular-interactions-medicines.html
1/15/2020 12:00 PMThe Amazon warriors of ancient Greek lore were once considered mythical figures. But in recent years, archaeological work and genetic analysis have identified women buried with weapons, horseback riding equipment and other accoutrements traditionally associated with warriors. Last month, a team led by archaeologist Valerii Guliaev announced the discovery of a 2,500-year-old tomb in which four such women were buried together. The findings were published in the journal of the Akson Russian Science Communication Association.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/tomb-containing-three-generations-amazon-warrior-women-unearthed-russia-180973877/
1/15/2020 2:00 PMhttps://bigthink.com/surprising-science/magnetic-field-record-lab-explosion
1/15/2020 4:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=243671559767434
1/15/2020 6:00 PMA conventional compass would be of little use on the moon, which today lacks a global magnetic field.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-scientists-pin-lunar-dynamo-demise.html
1/16/2020 8:00 AMhttps://nasaspxa.com/2020/01/04/satellite-images-show-australias-devastating-wildfires-from-space/
1/16/2020 10:00 AMThe most direct and strongest evidence for the accelerating universe with dark energy is provided by the distance measurements using type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) for the galaxies at high redshift. This result is based on the assumption that the corrected luminosity of SN Ia through the empirical standardization would not evolve with redshift.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-evidence-key-assumption-discovery-dark.html
1/16/2020 12:00 PMNASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered its first Earth-size planet in its star’s habitable zone, the range of distances where conditions may be just right to allow the presence of liquid water on the surface.https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200106200012.htm
1/16/2020 2:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2418679041794137
1/16/2020 4:00 PMFor more than a decade, astronomers across the globe have wrestled with the perplexities of fast radio bursts—intense, unexplained cosmic flashes of energy, light years away, that pop for mere milliseconds.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-nearby-galaxy-fast-radio-unravels.html
1/16/2020 6:00 PMFor the first time, scientists have created a silicon chip that can accelerate electrons — albeit at a fraction of the velocity of the most massive accelerators — using an infrared laser to deliver, in less than a hair’s width, the sort of energy boost that takes microwaves many feet.https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200102143352.htm
1/17/2020 8:00 AMThe decommissioning of coal-fired power plants in the continental United States has reduced nearby pollution and its negative impacts on human health and crop yields, according to a new University of California San Diego study.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-shutdown-coal-fired-crop-yields.html
1/17/2020 10:00 AMUsing the Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope (MOST), astronomers have detected a glitch in the radio pulsar PSR J0908−4913. The finding, detailed in a paper published December 18 on the arXiv preprint server, could be helpful in shedding more light on the properties and nature of this pulsar.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-glitch-pulsar-psr-j09084913.html
1/17/2020 12:00 PMMost of the time, Black Herons look like your typical wading bird—long legs, long necks, long beaks. But when it’s time to eat, this jet-black African species has a pretty nifty trick up its wings: It turns into an umbrella.https://www.audubon.org/news/watch-black-heron-fool-fish-turning-umbrella
1/17/2020 2:00 PMNearly a decade after the nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, researchers from the University of Georgia have found that wildlife populations are abundant in areas void of human life.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-animal-life-fukushima.html
1/17/2020 4:00 PMA blindingly bright star bursts into view in a corner of the night sky — it wasn’t there just a few hours ago, but now it burns like a beacon. That bright star isn’t actually a star, at least not anymore. The brilliant point of light is the explosion of a star that has reached the end of its life, otherwise known as a supernova.https://www.space.com/6638-supernova.html
1/17/2020 6:00 PMResearch on fossilized fish details the evolution of fins as they began to transition into limbs fit for walking on land.https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191231111856.htm
1/18/2020 8:00 AMhttps://www.space.com/inflating-universe-could-create-multiverse.html
1/18/2020 10:00 AMResearchers have developed a way to prop up a struggling immune system to enable its fight against sepsis, a deadly condition resulting from the body’s extreme reaction to infection.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-late-stage-sepsis-boosting-cells-antibacterial.html
1/18/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=756892598136049
1/18/2020 2:00 PMA trio of bubble-blowing galaxies may offer clues about one of the greatest cosmic makeovers in the history of the universe.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/reionization-hydrogen-galaxies-big-bang
1/18/2020 4:00 PMIndonesian conservationists say they’ve spotted the biggest specimen ever of what’s already been billed as one of the world’s largest flowers.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-biggest-bloom-world-largest-indonesia.html
1/18/2020 6:00 PMhttps://www.space.com/hidden-impact-crater-laos.html
1/19/2020 8:00 AMScientists at the MDI Biological Laboratory, in collaboration with scientists from the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, Calif., and Nanjing University in China, have identified synergistic cellular pathways for longevity that amplify lifespan fivefold in C. elegans, a nematode worm used as a model in aging research. The increase in lifespan would be the equivalent of a human living for 400 or 500 years, according to one of the scientists.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-biological-scientists-pathways-lifespan.html
1/19/2020 10:00 AMWhat is possibly the largest hoard of giant lemur remains has been discovered in an underwater cave in southwestern Madagascar. These remarkably preserved skulls and skeletons may just help researchers uncover the mystery shrouding Madagascar’s major plant and animal extinctions.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/madagascar-s-underwater-graveyard-yields-ancient-giant-lemurs/
1/19/2020 12:00 PMAstrophysicists are deep in the throes of a process they conduct every 10 years to set scientific priorities for the field; the results could determine which missions fly and which don’t. By the end of this process, dubbed Astro2020, the discipline will have a thorough document meant to steer astronomy and astrophysics research between 2022 and 2032.https://www.space.com/astronomers-setting-decadal-priorities.html
1/19/2020 2:00 PMMost people associate the idea of creatures trapped in amber with insects or spiders, which are preserved lifelike in fossil tree resin. An international research team of palaeontologists and biologists from the Universities of Göttingen and Helsinki, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York has now discovered the oldest slime mould identified to date. The fossil is about 100 million years old and is exquisitely preserved in amber from Myanmar.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-million-years-amber-oldest-fossilized.html
1/19/2020 4:00 PMMysterious ultra-fast pinpricks of radio energy keep lighting up the night sky and nobody knows why. A newly discovered example of this transient phenomenon has been traced to its place of origin — a nearby spiral galaxy — but it’s only made things murkier for astronomers.https://www.space.com/fast-radio-bursts-traced-to-origin.html
1/19/2020 6:00 PMThe outskirts of the Milky Way are home to the galaxy’s oldest stars. But astronomers have spotted something unexpected in this celestial retirement community: a flock of young stars.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-milky-impending-galactic-collision-birthing.html
1/20/2020 8:00 AMIn the summer of 2008, archaeologist Rachel Cubitt was in the middle of a routine cleanup procedure when she noticed something peculiar. The oddity wasn’t the ancient, mud-caked human skull she held in her hands. Rather, it was what Cubitt noticed inside that left her baffled. Enclosed within the cranium—dug up earlier that year near modern day York, England—was a loose, spongy lump that in a baffling twist of fate would turn out to be a shockingly well-preserved piece of a 2,600-year-old brain.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/super-resilient-protein-structures-preserved-hunk-brain-2600-years-180973927/
1/20/2020 10:00 AMFor the second time ever, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) has spotted two ultradense stellar remnants known as neutron stars violently crashing together. The gravitational wave event seems to have been generated by particularly massive entities that challenge astronomers’ models of neutron stars.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gravitational-wave-discovery-hints-at-another-spectacular-neutron-star-crash/
1/20/2020 12:00 PMTo date astronomers have discovered over 4,000 planets orbiting other stars. Statistically, there should be over 100 billion planets in our Milky Way galaxy. They come in a wide range of sizes and characteristics, largely unimagined before exoplanets were first discovered in the mid-1990s. The biggest motivation for perusing these worlds is to find “Genesis II,” a planet where life has arisen and evolved beyond microbes. The ultimate payoff would be finding intelligent life off the Earth.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-goldilocks-stars-life.html
1/20/2020 2:00 PMHomo erectus reached the Indonesian island of Java some 300,000 years later than many researchers have assumed, a new study finds.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/homo-erectus-came-indonesia-300000-years-later-than-once-thought
1/20/2020 4:00 PMTo replenish groundwater, many municipalities inject reclaimed water into depleted aquifers. The injected water has been purified by secondary wastewater treatment, and, in some cases, the water has been treated through tertiary processes and can be clean enough to drink directly.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-smarter-recharging-aquifer.html
1/20/2020 6:00 PMOnce pathogens become tolerant of one drug, they are more likely to become resilient against others, a clinical study finds.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/combining-multiple-antibiotics-may-make-bacteria-more-likely-to-develop-resistance/
1/21/2020 8:00 AMA new study suggests that dark energy might not be real after all. But other scientists have found major flaws with this bold claim.https://www.space.com/dark-energy-not-debunked.html
1/21/2020 10:00 AMResearchers have devised a straightforward technique for building a laboratory device known as an electroporator—which applies a jolt of electricity to temporarily open cell walls—from inexpensive components, including a piezoelectric crystal taken from a butane lighter.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-scientists-bbq-lighter-high-tech-lab.html
1/21/2020 12:00 PMThe jets emanating from a famous black hole are cruising along at about 99% the speed of light, according to new observations.https://www.space.com/black-hole-jets-near-speed-of-light.html
1/21/2020 2:00 PMhttp://www.geologypage.com/2019/10/benitoite-the-rarest-gemstone-found-in-the-world-only-been-found-in-california.html
1/21/2020 4:00 PMScientists at Los Alamos and international partners have created the first 3-D images of a special type of RNA molecule that is critical for stem cell programming and known as the “dark matter” of the genome.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-scientists-image-heart-rna.html
1/21/2020 6:00 PMThe star that ancient Egyptians once used as their North Star is part of a binary pair of stars that periodically eclipse one another, recent observations show. Known as Alpha Draconis, or Thuban, the star is located 270 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Draco, the dragon. Thuban is estimated to be five times brighter and nearly double the size of its stellar companion.https://www.space.com/ancient-north-star-thuban-eclipses-companion-aas235.html
1/22/2020 8:00 AMAnimal grandmas are often unable to reproduce at this later point in their life. The next best thing biologically speaking is to help rear children who are close relatives. For the most part, parents trust grandparents for two reasons. The parents were raised well enough to survive and reproduce, and maternal grandmas are 25% related to the children which imparts a sense of biological closeness and responsibility.https://carinbondar.com/2019/07/17/the-importance-of-animal-grandmas/
1/22/2020 10:00 AMHummingbirds are some of the most brightly-colored things in the entire world. Their feathers are iridescent— light bounces off them like a soap bubble, resulting in shimmering hues that shift as you look at them from different angles. While other birds like ducks can have bright feathers, nothing seems to come close to hummingbirds, and scientists weren’t sure why. But a new study shows that while hummingbird feathers have the same basic makeup as other birds’, the special shape of their pigment-containing structures enables them to reflect a rainbow of light.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-hummingbirds-rainbow-pancake-shaped-feathers.html
1/22/2020 12:00 PMResearchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have discovered how a new immune system works to protect bacteria from bacteriophages (phages), viruses that specifically infect bacteria. This new system is unusual in that it works by abortive infection—the infected bacterial cell self-destructs to keep the infection from spreading to other cells.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-team-bacteria-self-destruct-viral-infections.html
1/22/2020 2:00 PMA 550 million-year-old fossilized digestive tract found in the Nevada desert could be a key find in understanding the early history of animals on Earth.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-scientists-oldest-known-fossilized-digestive-tract.html
1/22/2020 4:00 PMA single cell contains the genetic instructions for an entire organism. This genomic information is managed and processed by the complex machinery of chromatin—a mix of DNA and protein within chromosomes whose function and role in disease are of increasing interest to scientists. A Northwestern University research team—using mathematical modeling and optical imaging they developed themselves—has discovered how chromatin folds at the single-cell level. The researchers found chromatin is folded into a variety of tree-like domains spaced along a chromatin backbone.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-chromatin-d-forests-cells.html
1/22/2020 6:00 PMA team of astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has measured the universe’s expansion rate using a technique that is completely independent of any previous method.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-cosmic-magnifying-glasses-yield-independent.html
1/23/2020 8:00 AMIf you’re an organism with a hankering for flesh, a few things can come in handy. Fast feet, for one, to give chase, and maybe some claws and a sharp set of teeth. Good vision doesn’t hurt, either—especially when it’s teamed up with a keen nose and big, sensitive ears. Unfortunately, the carnivorous Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula), which dines on bugs and spiders to compensate for the nutrient-poor soil of its natural wetland environment, has none of these lethal assets at its disposal.https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/venus-flytrap-hairs/
1/23/2020 10:00 AMA long-sought-after class of “superdiamond” carbon-based materials with tunable mechanical and electronic properties was predicted and synthesized by Carnegie’s Li Zhu and Timothy Strobel.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-superdiamond-carbon-boron-cages-properties.html
1/23/2020 12:00 PMCurtis Menyuk, professor of computer science and electrical engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), has collaborated with a team directed by Philip Russell at the Max-Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPI) in Erlangen, Germany, to gain insight into naturally-occurring molecular systems using optical solitons in lasers. Optical solitons are packets of light that are bound together and move at a constant speed without changing shape.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-optical-solitons-lasers-explore-naturally-occurring.html
1/23/2020 2:00 PMChemists have found a new use for the waste product of nuclear power—transforming an unused stockpile into a versatile compound which could be used to create valuable commodity chemicals as well as new energy sources.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-chemists-product-nuclear-power.html
1/23/2020 4:00 PMThe majority of living cockroaches are scavengers, feeding on detritus along the forest floor or inside our kitchens. But 100 million years ago, a terrifying roach hunted other insects with spiky limbs.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/predatory-cockroach-from-dinosaur-era-found-trapped-in-amber/
1/23/2020 6:00 PMA gold bar found in a Mexico City park in 1981 was part of the Aztec treasure looted by Hernan Cortes and the Spanish conquistadors 500 years ago, a new study says. The 1.93-kilogram bar was found by a construction worker during excavations for a new building along the Alameda, a picturesque park in the heart of the Mexican capital. For 39 years, its origins remained a mystery.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-gold-bar-mexico-aztec-treasure.html
1/24/2020 8:00 AMMost advanced-stage cancers mutate, resisting drugs meant to kill them. Now doctors are harnessing the principles of evolution to thwart that lethal adaptation.https://www.wired.com/story/cancer-treatment-darwin-evolution/
1/24/2020 10:00 AMhttps://www.upworthy.com/hermit-crabs-line-up-biggest-to-smallest-to-exchange-shells-and-its-mind-blowing-to-watch
1/24/2020 12:00 PMIn a new report, Milan M. Milošević and an international research team at the Zepler Institute for Photonics and Nanoelectronics, Etaphase Incorporated and the Departments of Chemistry, Physics and Astronomy, in the U.S. and the U.K. introduced a hyperuniform-disordered platform to realize near-infrared (NIR) photonic devices to create, detect and manipulate light.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-hyperuniform-disordered-waveguides-devices-infrared.html
1/24/2020 2:00 PMNuclear physicists’ next dream machine will be built at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, officials with the Department of Energy (DOE) announced today. The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) will smash a high-energy beam of electrons into one of protons to probe the mysterious innards of the proton. The machine will cost between $1.6 billion and $2.6 billion and should be up and running by 2030, said Paul Dabbar, DOE’s undersecretary for science, in a telephone press briefing.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/department-energy-picks-new-york-over-virginia-site-new-particle-collider
1/24/2020 4:00 PMDoctors have used focused ultrasound to destroy tumors without invasive surgery for some time. However, the therapeutic ultrasound used in clinics today indiscriminately damages cancer and healthy cells alike.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-ultrasound-cancer-cells-tuned-frequencies.html
1/24/2020 6:00 PMScientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have experimentally demonstrated a novel cryogenic, or low temperature, memory cell circuit design based on coupled arrays of Josephson junctions, a technology that may be faster and more energy efficient than existing memory devices. If successfully scaled, this type of cryogenic memory array could advance a variety of applications including quantum and exascale computing.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-memory-storage-super-cold.html
1/25/2020 8:00 AMAs the Mayan civilization was in decline, a diligent scribe was working on the oldest book created in the Americas: the Grolier Codex. The book, which contains personified images of the sun, death, and other deities—all working in service of the “star” Venus—is a guide to astronomy. For a long time, experts believed it was fake. But in a surprise twist, researchers are now saying that this 900-year-old book is the real thing after all.https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/the-oldest-book-written-in-the-americas-is-a-mayan-guide-to-astronomy/
1/25/2020 10:00 AMThree newly unearthed vertebrae from north-central Texas suggest the presence of an enormous shark during the Early Cretaceous Period in the region. This discovery provides further evidence that larger sharks had evolved prior to the Late Cretaceous.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/giant-20-foot-long-sharks-plied-the-seas-of-what-is-now-the-american-great-plains/
1/25/2020 12:00 PMMIT engineers have developed a method to produce aerospace-grade composites without enormous ovens and pressure vessels. The technique may help to speed up the manufacturing of airplanes and other large, high-performance composite structures, such as blades for wind turbines.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-carbon-nanotube-aerospace-grade-composites-huge.html
1/25/2020 2:00 PMScientists have been ringing alarm bells about the future of the Himalayas, known as “one of the world’s most sensitive hotspots to global climate change.” Much of experts’ attention has been focused on the regions’ glaciers, which are melting at a deeply worrying rate. But a new study, published in the journal Global Change Biology, highlights another ecosystem trend: plant life across the Himalayas is expanding, possibly due to warming temperatures.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/climate-change-may-be-causing-more-plants-sprout-himalayas-180973944/
1/25/2020 4:00 PMGianluca Masi, an astrophysicist working on the Virtual Telescope Project,which he founded, has announced the confirmation of 2020 AV2—the first asteroid orbiting entirely within the orbit of Venus. Masi describes on the Virtual Telescope Project web page the discovery by a team at the Zwicky Transient Facility and his confirmation of its orbit.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-virtual-telescope-av2-asteroid-orbit.html
1/25/2020 6:00 PMhttp://www.eartharchives.org/articles/new-species-of-dinosaur-called-regaliceratops-discovered-in-canada/
1/26/2020 8:00 AMHummingbirds are some of the most brightly-colored things in the entire world. Their feathers are iridescent– light bounces off them like a soap bubble, resulting in shimmering hues that shift as you look at them from different angles. While other birds like ducks can have bright feathers, nothing seems to come close to hummingbirds, and scientists weren’t sure why.https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-01/fm-hrc010620.php
1/26/2020 10:00 AMA team of researchers from Japan, Indonesia and Germany has found evidence that suggests Homo erectus arrived on the island of Java approximately 300,000 years later than thought. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes using two techniques to date the volcanic ash from which the oldest known fossils were unearthed, and what they found.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-dating-volcanic-ash-sangiran-homo.html
1/26/2020 12:00 PMNew simulations by Rice materials scientist Ming Tang and graduate student Kaiqi Yang shows too much stress in widely used lithium iron phosphate cathodes can open cracks and quickly degrade batteries.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-fast-batteries.html
1/26/2020 2:00 PMA nanopore is a tiny hole in a thin membrane with a diameter of around a billionth of a meter, or about the width of a single DNA molecule. The potential applications of these nanopores are so diverse—from medicine to information technology (IT)—that they could have a major impact on our daily lives. Now a team of researchers at the University of Ottawa is democratizing entry into the field of nanopore research by offering up a unique tool to accelerate the development of new applications and discoveries.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-tool-democratize-nanopore.html
1/26/2020 4:00 PMNine sources of extremely high-energy gamma rays comprise a new catalog compiled by researchers with the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Gamma-Ray Observatory. All produce gamma rays with energies over 56 trillion electron volts (TeV) and three emit gamma rays extending to 100 TeV and beyond, making these the highest-energy sources ever observed in our galaxy. The catalog helps to explain where the particles originate and how they are accelerated to such extremes.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-galactic-gamma-ray-sources-reveal-birthplaces.html
1/26/2020 6:00 PMThe evolution of endothermy (thermoregulation by metabolic means) represents a major transition in vertebrate history. However, the process of endothermy evolution and its timeline in birds and mammals remains controversial. In a new report, Enrico L. Rezende and a team of researchers at the Center of Applied Ecology and Sustainability, and the Institute of Environmental and Evolutionary Sciences in Chile, combined a heat transfer model with theropod body size data.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-dinosaurs-evolution-endothermy-birds.html
1/27/2020 8:00 AMA meteorologist explains how bizarre snow and ice formations take shape—and where you’re most likely to see them.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/science-behind-snow-rollers-ice-circles-other-winter-phenomena-180973946/
1/27/2020 10:00 AMResearchers say they have successfully created another embryo of the nearly extinct northern white rhino in a global effort to keep the species alive. Just two animals remain, and both are female.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-amazing-embryo-extinct-rhino-species.html
1/27/2020 12:00 PMEarly Stone Age populations living between 1.8 – 1.2 million years ago engineered their stone tools in complex ways to make optimised cutting tools, according to a new study by University of Kent and UCL.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-early-humans-revealed-optimized-stone.html
1/27/2020 2:00 PM15,000 years ago, some water froze atop the Tibetan Plateau and became part of a glacier. While humans were busy domesticating dogs, the ice entrapped millions of microscopic organisms per square inch. Many of the tiny life forms died, and their genomes—the only proof that they had been there in the first place—slowly degraded. Then, in 2015, scientists from the U.S. and China drilled down 50 meters into the glacier to see what they could find.https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pkebx9/scientists-found-ancient-never-before-seen-viruses-in-a-glacier
1/27/2020 4:00 PMhttps://phys.org/news/2020-01-reliable-extremely-fast-quantum-germanium.html
1/27/2020 6:00 PMMathematicians regard the Collatz conjecture as a quagmire and warn each other to stay away. But now Terence Tao has made more progress than anyone in decades.https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematician-terence-tao-and-the-collatz-conjecture-20191211/
1/28/2020 8:00 AMhttps://www.facebook.com/nasaearth/posts/10158252304907139
1/28/2020 10:00 AMUniversity of Colorado Boulder researchers have developed a new approach to designing more sustainable buildings with help from some of the tiniest contractors out there.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-materials-alive-bacteria.html
1/28/2020 12:00 PMAstronomers from UCLA’s Galactic Center Orbits Initiative have discovered a new class of bizarre objects at the center of our galaxy, not far from the supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-astronomers-class-strange-galaxy-enormous.html
1/28/2020 2:00 PMHomeland Security might soon have a new tool to add to its arsenal. Researchers at Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory have developed a new material that opens doors for a new class of neutron detectors.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-stable-semiconductor-neutron-detector.html
1/28/2020 4:00 PMScientists have transferred a collection of genes into plant-colonizing bacteria that let them draw nitrogen from the air and turn it into ammonia, a natural fertilizer. The work could help farmers around the world use less man-made fertilizers to grow important food crops like wheat, corn, and soybeans.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-nitrogen-fixing-genes-food-resources.html
1/28/2020 6:00 PMAstronomers have discovered another candidate exoplanet orbiting our neighbor Proxima Centauri. A paper announcing these results was just published in the journal Science Advances. If confirmed, it will be the second exoplanet discovered to be orbiting the star.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-discovery-super-earth-orbiting-proxima-centauri.html
1/29/2020 8:00 AMWhat might look like jelly being stirred is actually water subjected to 20 times normal Earth gravity within ESA’s Large Diameter Centrifuge—as part of an experiment giving new insight into the behavior of wave turbulence.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-high-gravity.html
1/29/2020 10:00 AMNeanderthals collected clam shells and volcanic rock from the beach and coastal waters of Italy during the Middle Paleolithic, according to a new study.https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200115140458.htm
1/29/2020 12:00 PMScientists have traced the journey of phosphorous, one of the essential building blocks for life as we know it on Earth, through the star-forming regions of space.https://www.space.com/phosphorous-lifes-building-blocks-journey-traced-comet-rosetta.html
1/29/2020 2:00 PMResearchers at EPFL have developed a new model to calculate hydraulic fracture propagation. Acclaimed for its accuracy by experts, the model better predicts fracture geometry and the energy cost of hydraulic fracturing—a widely used technique in areas such as CO2 storage, hydrocarbon extraction, dams and volcano hazard monitoring.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-hydraulic-fracture-propagation-accurately.html
1/29/2020 4:00 PMFungus could be very much among us when humanity sets up shop on the moon and beyond. NASA researchers are investigating the potential of mycelia — the mass of nutrient-absorbing, widely branching underground threads that make up much of a fungus’s bulk — to help construct outposts on the moon and Mars.https://www.space.com/nasa-fungus-moon-mars-bases-niac-technology.html
1/29/2020 6:00 PMThirty percent of Earth’s surface across land and sea should become protected areas by 2030 to ensure the viability of ecosystems essential to human wellbeing, according to a UN plan.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-planet-nature.html
1/30/2020 8:00 AM2021 could be a big year for Sierra Nevada Corp. The Colorado-based spaceflight company is on track for a 2021 launch debut of its robotic Dream Chaser space plane, even as the firm shoots for the moon under NASA’s Artemis program, Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) representatives said.https://www.space.com/sierra-nevada-dream-chaser-launch-2021.html
1/30/2020 10:00 AMA team of researchers affiliated with a large number of institutions in Japan has found a possible link between primitive archaea and the development of eukaryotes. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes culturing Prometheoarchaeum syntrophicum samples and what they learned by studying them.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-incubated-prometheoarchaeum-syntrophicum-samples-clues.html
1/30/2020 12:00 PMThe scale and speed of the current bushfire crisis has caught many people off-guard, including biodiversity scientists. People are scrambling to estimate the long-term effects. It is certain that many animal species will be pushed to the brink of extinction, but how many? One recent article suggested 20 to 100, but this estimate mostly considers large, well-known species (especially mammals and birds).https://phys.org/news/2020-01-australia-bushfires-animal-species-extinction.html
1/30/2020 2:00 PMA team of researchers from the University of New England, the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Natural History Museum and Swinburne University of Technology, all in Australia, has identified fossils found near Winton as remains of the largest theropod found to date in Australia. In their paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the group describes the bones they found and its likely species.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-fossils-largest-theropod-date-australia.html
1/30/2020 4:00 PMLurking in the seas of Indonesia is a fearsome predator bearing jaws fringed with razor-sharp spikes. Hapless fish – even predators on the hunt themselves – cannot escape if seized. So sudden and fierce is the snap of its jaws, prey may be sliced instantly in two, as if put to death by a bionic marine guillotine.https://www.bbcearth.com/blog/?article=snapping-death-worms-can-hide-undetected-for-years
1/30/2020 6:00 PMRipples in the underbelly of the magnetosphere move like a plucked guitar string that quickly returns to equilibrium, one researcher said.https://www.space.com/gamera-model-reveals-plasma-bubble-earth-magnetosphere.html
1/31/2020 8:00 AMHow did the monstrous giant squid—reaching school-bus size, with eyes as big as dinner plates and tentacles that can snatch prey 10 yards away—get so scarily big? Today, important clues about the anatomy and evolution of the mysterious giant squid (Architeuthis dux) are revealed through publication of its full genome sequence by a University of Copenhagen-led team that includes scientist Caroline Albertin of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-mysterious-legendary-giant-squid-genome.html
1/31/2020 10:00 AMA dumbbell-shaped nanoparticle powered just by the force and torque of light has become the world’s fastest-spinning object. Scientists at Purdue University created the object, which revolves at 300 billion revolutions per minute. Or, put another way, half a million times faster than a dentist’s drill.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-01-nanoparticle-levitated-rotates-billion-rpm.html
1/31/2020 12:00 PMWhy does time seem to move forward? It’s a riddle that’s puzzled physicists for well over a century, and they’ve come up with numerous theories to explain time’s arrow. The latest, though, suggests that while time moves forward in our universe, it may run backwards in another, mirror universe that was created on the “other side” of the Big Bang.https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/big-bang-may-created-mirror-universe-time-runs-backwards/
1/31/2020 2:00 PMAstronomer Vera Rubin changed the way we think of the universe by showing that galaxies are mostly dark matter.https://www.space.com/vera-rubin.html
1/31/2020 4:00 PMFor more than 100 years, astronomers have been observing a curious star located some 190 light years away from Earth in the constellation Libra. It rapidly journeys across the sky at 800,000 mph (1.3 million kilometers per hour). But more interesting than that, HD 140283 — or Methuselah as it’s commonly known — is also one of the universe’s oldest known stars.https://www.space.com/how-can-a-star-be-older-than-the-universe.html
1/31/2020 6:00 PMA mysterious case of dying fish in the lower Congo River helped scientists discover that this body is the deepest river on the planet. It’s also a place where raging rapids, powerful currents and even submerged “waterfalls” divide the water, much as mountain ranges can separate habitats on land.https://www.livescience.com/congo-river-fish-with-bends.html
2/1/2020 8:00 AMIn a discovery that has implications for our understanding of the air we breathe, UCI chemists report that they’ve found nanoscale fragments of fungal cells in the atmosphere. The pieces are extremely small, measuring about 30 nanometers in diameter, and much more abundant than previously thought.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-chemists-fungal-shrapnel-air.html
2/1/2020 10:00 AMT 10
2/1/2020 12:00 PMExtreme heat from the Mount Vesuvius eruption in Italy was so immense it turned one victim’s brain into glass, a study has suggested.https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51221334
2/1/2020 2:00 PMNew research from the University of Rochester provides evidence that the magnetic field that first formed around Earth was even stronger than scientists previously believed.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-evidence-strong-early-magnetic-field.html
2/1/2020 4:00 PMA crater in western Australia was formed by a meteor strike more than 2.2 billion years ago and is the world’s oldest known impact site, new research published Wednesday shows.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-billion-years-scientists-date-world.html
2/1/2020 6:00 PMScientists for the first time have developed a single molecule that can absorb sunlight efficiently and also act as a catalyst to transform solar energy into hydrogen, a clean alternative to fuel for things like gas-powered vehicles.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-harness-entire-spectrum-sunlight.html
2/2/2020 8:00 AMThe world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope is officially open for business according to Xinhua, China’s official state-run media. The FAST Radio Telescope saw fist light in 2016 but has been undergoing testing and commissioning since then. FAST stands for Five-hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope.https://www.universetoday.com/144669/chinas-500-meter-fast-radio-telescope-is-now-operational/
2/2/2020 10:00 AMT 10
2/2/2020 12:00 PMTurtles are some of the most interesting animals on Earth. They are the most complex of animals with hard shells. But scientists have long puzzled about how they evolved.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/how-did-the-turtle-get-its-shell/
2/2/2020 2:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=170037610929381
2/2/2020 4:00 PMMove over, red dwarfs. Emerging research shows that another star type could be more friendly to life.https://www.space.com/orange-dwarfs-may-host-habitable-planets.html
2/2/2020 6:00 PMA new species of feathered dinosaur has been discovered in China, and described by American and Chinese authors and published in the journal, The Anatomical Record. The one-of-a-kind specimen offers a window into what the earth was like 120 million years ago. The fossil preserves feathers and bones that provide new information about how dinosaurs grew and how they differed from birds.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-dinosaur-china-dinosaurs-grew-differently.html
2/3/2020 8:00 AMA team of researchers from several institutions in the U.K. and one in the U.S. has found that human culture evolves just as slowly as biological evolution. In their paper published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, the group describes how they developed metrics for cultural evolution and compared them with metrics for biological evolution.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-human-cultural-evolution-biological.html
2/3/2020 10:00 AMT 10
2/3/2020 12:00 PMDNA extracted from bones collected in the Yukon show that North America’s last camel was a close relative of Old World camels and not llamas as previously thought.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/ice-age-camel-bones-found-in-yukon-redraw-species-lineage/
2/3/2020 2:00 PMA new search led by Montana State University has revealed more than a dozen massive black holes in dwarf galaxies that were previously considered too small to host them, and surprised scientists with their location within the galaxies.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-astrophysicists-massive-black-holes-dwarf.html
2/3/2020 4:00 PMHumanity’s most far-flung spacecraft, NASA’s 41-year-old Voyager 1, has poked a hole in a long-shot theory of dark matter. Some theorists have argued that the mysterious, unseen stuff, which makes up 85% of the universe’s matter, could consist of countless black holes lingering from the big bang. But Voyager 1, which launched in 1977 and slipped out of the solar system 6 years ago, sees no signs of such hordes, a pair of theoretical physicists reports. The data don’t kill the idea that dark matter is black holes entirely, however, as Voyager 1 can detect only tiny black holes.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/aging-voyager-1-spacecraft-undermines-idea-dark-matter-tiny-black-holes
2/3/2020 6:00 PMChina’s long-lived lunar robots Chang’e-4 and Yutu-2 are at work on the far side of the moon, and those of us here on Earth can take a new look through the lander’s and rover’s lunar eyes, as China released a huge batch of data on Monday (Jan. 20). The data release includes high-resolution images of the moon from the Chang’e-4 lander’s terrain camera and the panoramic camera on the Yutu-2 rover.https://www.space.com/china-moon-far-side-lander-rover-photos-14th-lunar-day.html
2/4/2020 8:00 AMAustralia’s devastating drought is having a critical impact on the iconic platypus, a globally unique mammal, with increasing reports of rivers drying up and platypuses becoming stranded.https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200121112922.htm
2/4/2020 10:00 AMT 10
2/4/2020 12:00 PMA group of University of Chicago scientists has uncovered a previously unknown way that our genes are made into reality.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-discovery-gene.html
2/4/2020 2:00 PMMathematicians, physicists, and materials experts might not spring to mind as the first people to consult about whether you are brewing your coffee right. But a team of such researchers from around the globe—the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and Switzerland—are challenging common espresso wisdom, finding that fewer coffee beans, ground more coarsely, are the key to a drink that is cheaper to make, more consistent from shot to shot, and just as strong.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-brewing-espresso-shot-math.html
2/4/2020 4:00 PMFifty million years ago, a throng of thimble-sized fish met its untimely end. Now, a team of Japanese scientists may have uncovered the pristinely-preserved mass grave that immortalized these doomed creatures’ final moments.https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/fossil-school-fish/
2/4/2020 6:00 PMhttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/01/astronomers-just-got-deep-peek-at-black-hole-xray-newton/
2/5/2020 8:00 AMEight years of experiments demonstrate the bridging of large gaps in damaged nerves.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-nerve-growing-method-could-help-injured-soldiers-and-others/
2/5/2020 10:00 AMT 10
2/5/2020 12:00 PMResearchers from China and the U.S. embarked on a field trip to Tibet in 2015, and discovered 28 previously undiscovered virus groups—in a melting glacier. The researchers drilled a 164-foot hole into the glacier, gathered two ice core samples from the 15,000-year-old glacier, and then later identified them in a lab. In total, they identified 33 virus groups—28 of which were completely new to science.https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a30643717/viruses-found-melting-glacier/
2/5/2020 2:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=482855842619014
2/5/2020 4:00 PMThey are revered throughout nature as chilling predators, but new research shows crocodiles have not always been the cold-blooded creatures they are today. Scientists who analysed fossil teeth belonging to some of the species’ ancient ancestors say at least one type of prehistoric crocodile was warm blooded.http://www.deadlinenews.co.uk/2020/01/21/warm-blooded-crocs-thrived-in-jurassic-cold-snap-fossil-teeth-show/
2/5/2020 6:00 PMNileSat, an Egyptian satellite operator, has picked SpaceX to launch a new communications satellite in 2022. SpaceX and Nilesat signed a contract in Cairo, Egypt for the launch of the hefty NileSat-301 geostationary communications satellite on a Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX officials said.https://www.space.com/spacex-nilesat-satellite-launch-in-2022.html
2/6/2020 8:00 AMESA’s technical heart has begun to produce oxygen out of simulated moondust. A prototype oxygen plant has been set up in the Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory of the European Space Research and Technology Centre, ESTEC, based in Noordwijk in the Netherlands.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-esa-oxygen-air-moondust.html
2/6/2020 10:00 AMT 10
2/6/2020 12:00 PMTechniques to genetically modify patient immune cells have revolutionized the fight against hard-to-treat cancers. But they can come with dangerous side effects. Now, researchers have found one reason why.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/exploding-cancer-cells-can-cause-serious-side-effects-car-t-cell-therapies
2/6/2020 2:00 PMPhysicists at Lancaster University have demonstrated that their invention of a new type of memory device could transform the way computers, smartphones and other gadgets work.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-01-universal-memory-milestone.html
2/6/2020 4:00 PMIt turns out stress does turn hair gray, and now researchers know how. Stress triggers the body’s fight-or-flight response, which in turn causes pigment-producing cells that give hair its color to go into a frenzy and dwindle in number. As these pigment cells disappear, so does the color.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-stress-turns-hair-gray-triggers-body-fight-flight-response
2/6/2020 6:00 PMA Chinese next-generation spacecraft for taking astronauts to low Earth orbit and beyond has arrived at a coastal spaceport in preparation for a test flight. The new spacecraft is designed boost China’s capabilities in sending humans into orbit, reduce costs through partial reusability, and allow astronauts to survive the radiation environment and higher-speed reentries of deep-space missions.https://www.space.com/china-deep-space-crew-capsule-launch-prep.html
2/7/2020 8:00 AMUsing the latest satellite technology from the European Space Agency (ESA), scientists from the University of Bristol have been tracking patterns of mass loss from Pine Island—Antarctica’s largest glacier.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-patterns-thinning-antarctica-biggest-glacier.html
2/7/2020 10:00 AMT 10
2/7/2020 12:00 PMOne wasp species has evolved the ability to recognize individual faces among their peers—something that most other insects cannot do—signaling an evolution in how they have learned to work together.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-profound-evolution-wasps.html
2/7/2020 2:00 PMUsing computer simulations of a model by U.S. Nobel Laureate William Nordhaus, researchers have weighted climate damage from increasing weather extremes, decreasing labor productivity and other factors against the costs of cutting greenhouse gas emission by phasing out coal and oil. Interestingly, the most economically cost-efficient level of global warming turns out to be 2 degrees Celsius, the level to which more than 190 nations agreed in the Paris Climate Agreement. So far, however, CO2 reductions promised by nations worldwide are insufficient to reach this goal.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-climate-lowest-limited-degrees-celsius.html
2/7/2020 4:00 PMAuroras paint the sky around the poles when the sun is particularly active, flinging highly charged particles at Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists once thought that the gorgeous events were mirror images, but to their surprise, displays at the north (the aurora borealis) and south (the aurora australis) don’t precisely match.https://www.space.com/43130-northern-lights-auroras-different-in-south.html
2/7/2020 6:00 PMA fossil of a squid with a pterosaur tooth embedded in it offers extraordinary evidence of a 150-million-year-old battle at sea. While many pterosaur fossils containing fish scales and bones in their stomachs have revealed that some of these flying reptiles included fish in their diet, the new find from Germany is the first proof that pterosaurs also hunted squid.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/squid-fossil-offers-rare-record-pterosaur-feeding-behavior
2/8/2020 8:00 AMIf you were planning to drink your way through the climate apocalypse, here’s some unfortunate news: Just as climate change threatens homes, food and livelihoods, so does it threaten the world’s supply of wine. If temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius, the regions of the world that are suitable for growing wine grapes could shrink by as much as 56 percent, according to a new study. And with 4 degrees of warming, 85 percent of those lands would no longer be able to produce good wines.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-wine-regions-climate-growers-swap.html
2/8/2020 10:00 AMT 10
2/8/2020 12:00 PMStreams of plasma from the sun create “chirping” and “whistling” noises, and NASA’s Parker Solar Probe can hear them. The solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the sun’s upper atmosphere, also known as the corona. This plasma consists of electrons, protons and other charged particles that flow from the sun’s atmosphere and out into the solar system at roughly 1 million mph (1.6 million km/h).https://www.space.com/nasa-solar-probe-hears-solar-wind-whisper.html
2/8/2020 2:00 PMAn unusual chunk in a meteorite may contain a surprising bit of space history, based on new research from Washington University in St. Louis. Presolar grains—tiny bits of solid interstellar material formed before the sun was born—are sometimes found in primitive meteorites. But a new analysis reveals evidence of presolar grains in part of a meteorite where they are not expected to be found.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-curious-curiouser-meteorite-chunk-unexpected.html
2/8/2020 4:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=520200318892578
2/8/2020 6:00 PMThe company SpinLaunch is building a massive centrifuge to accelerate rockets and send them screaming into space.https://www.wired.com/story/inside-spinlaunch-the-space-industrys-best-kept-secret/
2/9/2020 8:00 AMThe way the fabric of space and time swirls in a cosmic whirlpool around a dead star has confirmed yet another prediction from Einstein’s theory of general relativity, a new study finds.https://www.space.com/einstein-general-relativity-frame-dragging.html
2/9/2020 10:00 AMT 10
2/9/2020 12:00 PMA tiny nanoparticle has been chilled to the max. Physicists cooled a nanoparticle to the lowest temperature allowed by quantum mechanics. The particle’s motion reached what’s known as the ground state, or lowest possible energy level.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/scientists-cooled-nanoparticle-quantum-limit-ground-state
2/9/2020 2:00 PMAn international team of astrophysicists led by Australian Professor Matthew Bailes, from the ARC Centre of Excellence of Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), has shown exciting new evidence for ‘frame-dragging’—how the spinning of a celestial body twists space and time—after tracking the orbit of an exotic stellar pair for almost two decades.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-astronomers-witness-space-time-stellar-cosmic.html
2/9/2020 4:00 PMA compound made by cannabis plants has been found to wipe out drug-resistant bacteria, raising hopes of a new weapon in the fight against superbugs. Scientists screened five cannabis compounds for their antibiotic properties and found that one, cannabigerol (CBG), was particularly potent at killing methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), one of the most common hospital superbugs.https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jan/19/cannabis-compound-could-be-weapon-in-fight-against-superbugs
2/9/2020 6:00 PMResearchers from Google and Janelia Research Campus in Virginia have unveiled the biggest high-resolution map of brain connectivity yet, known as a connectome. It shows a diagram of a fruit fly’s brain, containing 25,000 neurons and the 20 million connections between them.https://www.technologyreview.com/f/615084/this-map-of-a-fruit-flys-brain-connectivity-is-the-biggest-one-weve-ever-seen/
2/10/2020 8:00 AMNASA plans for the first time to allow researchers to fly with their payloads on commercial suborbital vehicles, ending years of debate and deliberation.https://spacenews.com/nasa-to-allow-researchers-to-fly-on-commercial-suborbital-vehicles/
2/10/2020 10:00 AMT 10
2/10/2020 12:00 PMAn Arizona businessman and miner introduced a new gemstone called Sonoranite that he and his brother found about a decade ago in Arizona. John Hornewer said that they made a discovery by a fluke hiking trip in the northern desert of Scottsdale, Arizona and they came across an old abandoned mine.https://kvoa.com/news/local-news/2020/01/30/new-gemstone-found-in-arizona-introduced-at-tucson-gem-mineral-fossil-showcase/
2/10/2020 2:00 PMWhen water flows deep underground, it often dissolves inorganic substances from mineral deposits in the earth’s crust. In many regions, these deposits contain arsenic, a naturally occurring element that is colorless, tasteless and odorless. Although its presence is barely noticeable, prolonged exposure to arsenic-contaminated water can lead to gangrene, disease and many types of cancer, resulting in major loss of income for millions of people and even death.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-rust-cheap-filter-arsenic-poisoned.html
2/10/2020 4:00 PMDuring an unprecedented scientific campaign on an Antarctic glacier notorious for contributions to sea-level, researchers took first-ever images at the glacier’s foundations on the ocean floor. The area is key to Thwaites Glacier’s potential to become more dangerous, and in the coming months, the research team hopes to give the world a clearer picture of its condition.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-robotic-submarine-snaps-first-ever-images.html
2/10/2020 6:00 PMAfricans today possess more Neandertal ancestry than previously thought, a new analysis shows, though still not as much as most people outside of Africa.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-genetic-analysis-reveals-modern-africans-have-some-neandertal-dna
2/11/2020 8:00 AMIn 1966, two Caltech scientists were ruminating on the implications of the thin carbon dioxide (CO2) Martian atmosphere first revealed by Mariner IV, a NASA fly-by spacecraft built and flown by JPL. They theorized that Mars, with such an atmosphere, could have a long-term stable polar deposit of CO2 ice that, in turn, would control global atmospheric pressure. A new study from Caltech suggests that the theory, developed by physicist Robert B. Leighton (BS ’41, MS ’44, Ph.D. ’47) and planetary scientist Bruce C. Murray, may indeed be correct.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-mystery-mars-pole.html
2/11/2020 10:00 AMChi Chen, a Boston University graduate researcher, and Ranga Myneni, a BU College of Arts & Sciences professor of earth and environment, released a new paper that reveals how humans are helping to increase the Earth’s plant and tree cover, which absorbs carbon from the atmosphere and cools our planet. The boom of vegetation, fueled by greenhouse gas emissions, could be skewing our perception of how fast we’re warming the planet.https://phys.org/news/2020-01-planet-greener-global.html
2/11/2020 12:00 PMDuring a trip to Mammoth Cave National Park in November, paleontologist John-Paul Hodnett was stunned. Preserved in the walls of the cave were parts of a large, fossilized shark head — from a shark that lived about 330 million years ago.https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2020/01/29/mammoth-cave-sharks-rare-fossils-found-kentucky-national-park/4565713002/
2/11/2020 2:00 PMhttps://www.businessinsider.com/animation-internet-satellites-surrounding-earth-starlink-kuiper-oneweb-agi-2020-1
2/11/2020 4:00 PMNew research techniques are being adopted by scientists tackling the most visible impact of climate change — the so-called greening of Arctic regions. The latest drone and satellite technology is helping an international team of researchers better understand how the vast, treeless regions called the tundra is becoming greener.https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200131135140.htm
2/11/2020 6:00 PMOne of the cornerstones of quantum theory is a fundamental limit to the precision with which we can know certain pairs of physical quantities, such as position and momentum. For quantum theoretical treatments, this uncertainty principle is couched in terms of the Heisenberg limit, which allows for physical quantities that do not have a corresponding observable in the formulation of quantum mechanics, such as time and energy, or the phase observed in interferometric measurements. It sets a fundamental limit on measurement accuracy in terms of the resources used. Now, a collaboration of researchers in Poland and Australia have proven that the Heisenberg limit as it is commonly stated is not operationally meaningful, and differs from the correct limit by a factor of π.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-heisenberg-limit-meaningful.html
2/12/2020 8:00 AMhttps://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/researchers-tracked-wild-salamander-stayed-completely-still-seven-years/
2/12/2020 10:00 AMScientists have identified low-energy particles lurking near the Sun that likely originated from solar wind interactions well beyond Earth orbit. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is venturing closer to the Sun than any previous probe. Scientists are probing the enigmatic features of the Sun to answer many questions, including how to protect space travelers and technology from the radiation associated with solar events.https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200203141517.htm
2/12/2020 12:00 PMA team of astronomers has identified some of the oldest galaxies ever seen. These objects were already fully formed when the universe was just 680 million years old, according to the scientists, who also found evidence that these galaxies were flooding their surroundings with extreme ultraviolet radiation.https://www.space.com/when-did-the-universe-wake-up.html
2/12/2020 2:00 PMScientists have observed the presence of warm water at a vital point underneath a glacier in Antarctica — an alarming discovery that raises concerns about sea-level rise around the globe.https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200129174526.htm
2/12/2020 4:00 PMA new, bizarre spider-like creature has just been discovered in Southeast Asia, having been encased in amber during the Cretaceous period some 100 million years ago, and it might be more terrifying than any of the creepy-crawlies lurking in the dark corners of your basement.http://www.geologyin.com/2018/02/part-spider-part-scorpion-creature.html
2/12/2020 6:00 PMThe 5th annual Arctic mission, in partnership with NOAA and NASA, took a fleet of saildrones to a new frontier—the Arctic ice edge—to improve sea ice prediction and satellite algorithm development.https://www.saildrone.com/news/arctic-sea-ice-edge-mission
2/13/2020 8:00 AMThe University of Rochester research lab that recently used lasers to create unsinkable metallic structures has now demonstrated how the same technology could be used to create highly efficient solar power generators.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-lasers-etch-solar-energy-absorber.html
2/13/2020 10:00 AMMaxar Technologies announced a $142 million NASA contract to demonstrate in-space assembly using a robotic arm. Maxar said the contract will take its Dragonfly robotics program, which started in 2015 as a DARPA study, and pair it with Restore-L, a refueling spacecraft the company is building for NASA.https://spacenews.com/maxar-wins-142-million-nasa-robotics-mission/
2/13/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=158544495594292
2/13/2020 2:00 PMScientists at The Field Museum have identified a new species of pre-mammal in what is now Zambia. Thanks to a unique groove on the animal’s upper jaw, it was dubbed Ichibengops (Itchy-BEN-gops), which combines the local Bemba word for scar (ichibenga), and the common Greek suffix for face (ops). Put simply: Scarface.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/prehistoric-carnivore-dubbed-scarface-discovered-in-zambia/
2/13/2020 4:00 PMWhile eating takeout one day, University of Chicago scientists Bozhi Tian and Yin Fang started thinking about the noodles—specifically, their elasticity. A specialty of Xi’an, Tian’s hometown in China, is wheat noodles stretched by hand until they become chewy—strong and elastic. Why, the two materials scientists wondered, didn’t they get thin and weak instead? They started experimenting, ordering pounds and pounds of noodles from the restaurant.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-breakthrough-tough-material-defend.html
2/13/2020 6:00 PMOne of summer’s most enduring sights may be extinguished forever in some parts of the world. Fireflies, aka lightning bugs, are facing a triple extinction threat from habitat loss, artificial light and pesticide use, new research suggests.https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/02/04/fireflies-face-extinction-habitat-loss-artificial-light-and-pesticides/4656934002/
2/14/2020 8:00 AM2,076-pound great white shark tagged by the research nonprofit OCEARCH has pinged about 100 miles off of the shores of Northwest Florida. OCEARCH’s website has been tracking 11 white sharks that were tagged in fall 2019 in Nova Scotia. The shark known as Unama’ki is one of the largest and was tagged at 15 feet, 5 inches long, according to the OCEARCH website.https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/02/04/ocearch-great-white-shark-unamaki-pings-florida-coast/4660543002/
2/14/2020 10:00 AMScientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have identified a new species of thalattosaur, a marine reptile that lived more than 200 million years ago.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-thalattosaur-species-southeast-alaska.html
2/14/2020 12:00 PMA new handheld 3-D printer can deposit sheets of skin to cover large burn wounds—and its “bio ink” can accelerate the healing process. The device, developed by a team of researchers from the University of Toronto Engineering and Sunnybrook Hospital, covers wounds with a uniform sheet of biomaterial, stripe by stripe.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-02-handheld-d-skin-printer-large.html
2/14/2020 2:00 PMhttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cyborg-jellyfish-could-one-day-explore-the-ocean/
2/14/2020 4:00 PMFor years now, an international team of researchers has hidden themselves deep beneath a mountain in central Italy, tirelessly collecting the most sensitive measurements from the coldest cubic meter in the known universe. The scientists are searching for evidence that ghostly particles called neutrinos are indistinguishable from their own antimatter counterparts. If proved, the discovery could resolve a cosmic conundrum that has plagued physicists for decades: Why does matter exist at all?https://www.livescience.com/search-for-majorana-neutrino-solve-cosmic-conundrum.html
2/14/2020 6:00 PMWhen cuttlefish know that shrimp—their favourite food—will be available in the evening, they eat fewer crabs during the day. This capacity to make decisions based on future expectations reveals complex cognitive abilities.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-cuttlefish-lunch-therell-shrimp-dinner.html
2/15/2020 8:00 AMOf all the many ways the teeming ecosystem of microbes in a person’s gut and other tissues might affect health, its potential influences on the brain may be the most provocative. Now, a study of two large groups of Europeans has found several species of gut bacteria are missing in people with depression. The researchers can’t say whether the absence is a cause or an effect of the illness, but they showed that many gut bacteria could make substances that affect nerve cell function—and maybe mood.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/02/evidence-mounts-gut-bacteria-can-influence-mood-prevent-depression
2/15/2020 10:00 AMA nuclear war that cooled Earth could worsen the impact of ocean acidification on corals, clams, oysters and other marine life with shells or skeletons, according to the first study of its kind.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-global-cooling-nuclear-war-ocean.html
2/15/2020 12:00 PMLike a scene from the 19th century, US fossil hunters have used Clydesdale horses to remove a rare giant dinosaur bone from a gully in the mid-west desert. The 2-metre-long upper arm bone — among the largest ever found — belonged to one of the tallest dinosaurs that walked the planet, a Brachiosaurus.https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2020-01-30/rare-two-metre-long-dinosaur-bone-unveiled-brachiosaurus/11910130
2/15/2020 2:00 PMSpaceX is poised to launch its first astronauts into space this spring: Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. Their flight on the company’s Crew Dragon spaceship will mark the first time an American spacecraft has carried NASA astronauts since the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011.https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-astronauts-to-fly-spacex-crew-dragon-how-they-prepare-2020-1
2/15/2020 4:00 PMAbrupt thawing of permafrost will double previous estimates of potential carbon emissions from permafrost thaw in the Arctic, and is already rapidly changing the landscape and ecology of the circumpolar north, a new CU Boulder-led study finds.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-arctic-permafrost-greater-role-climate.html
2/15/2020 6:00 PMhttps://www.wired.com/2017/04/mystery-5-foot-long-shipworm-just-got-stinkier/
2/16/2020 8:00 AMA new technique could offer a targeted approach to fighting cancer: low-intensity pulses of ultrasound have been shown to selectively kill cancer cells while leaving normal cells unharmed.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-ultrasound-cancer-cells.html
2/16/2020 10:00 AMAfter decades of poking around in the math behind the glue holding the innards of all matter together, physicists have found a strange hypothetical particle, one that has never appeared in any experiment. Called a sexaquark, the oddball is made up of a funky arrangement of six quarks of various flavors.https://www.livescience.com/sexquarks-could-explain-dark-matter.html
2/16/2020 12:00 PMSixty-six million years ago, an asteroid slammed into the Earth and wiped out 70 per cent of all life — but while the dinosaurs perished, a species of turtle measuring only 60 cm long survived.https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/this-extinct-species-of-turtles-survived-the-asteroid-that-killed-the-dinosaurs-1.4795736
2/16/2020 2:00 PMSpaceX is already planning the next big test flight of its future Starship rocket out of southern Texas. As early as mid-March, the company is hoping to fly a test version of the vehicle to a super high altitude and then land it upright on solid ground, proving the rocket can be reused and potentially touch down on other worlds.https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21122220/spacex-starship-rocket-20-kilometer-test-flight-boca-chica-texas
2/16/2020 4:00 PMA SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will loft the PACE satellite (its name is short for Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) ) spacecraft into orbit in December 2022, NASA announced. The launch will take place from Cape Canaveral, Florida using a Falcon 9 whose first stage has launched at least one mission in the past.https://www.space.com/spacex-pace-earth-oceans-climate-nasa-satellite.html
2/16/2020 6:00 PMA new skeleton discovered in the submerged caves at Tulum sheds new light on the earliest settlers of Mexico, according to a study published February 5, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Wolfgang Stinnesbeck from Universität Heidelberg, Germany.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-year-old-mexican-female-skeleton-distinct.html
2/17/2020 8:00 AMA little-known type of particle called a kaon may be stepping into the spotlight. The exotic subatomic particles are attracting attention for their unexpected behavior in an experiment at a Japanese particle accelerator. Rare kaon decays seem to be happening more frequently than expected, according to the KOTO experiment. If the result holds up to further scrutiny, it could hint at never-before-seen particles that would dethrone particle physicists’ reigning theory, the standard model.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/kaons-rare-decay-particles-standard-model
2/17/2020 10:00 AMhttps://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/do-gut-bacteria-make-second-home-our-brains
2/17/2020 12:00 PMIn December, Blue Origin, a spaceflight company founded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, signed a 15-year cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with the Air Force Research Laboratory. The contract laid out plans for the testing of Blue Origin’s BE-7 engine, which will be used for the company’s lunar lander.https://www.space.com/blue-origin-moon-lander-engine-test-site-afrl-lab.html
2/17/2020 2:00 PMAn international team of astronomers led by scientists at the University of California, Riverside, has found an unusual monster galaxy that existed about 12 billion years ago, when the universe was only 1.8 billion years old. Dubbed XMM-2599, the galaxy formed stars at a high rate and then died. Why it suddenly stopped forming stars is unclear.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-astronomers-unusual-monster-galaxy-early.html
2/17/2020 4:00 PMUsing an innovative genome sequencing technology, researchers assembled the complete genetic blueprint of two basmati rice varieties, including one that is drought-tolerant and resistant to bacterial disease. The findings also show that basmati rice is a hybrid of two other rice groups.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-scientists-sequence-genome-basmati-rice.html
2/17/2020 6:00 PMFrom protons to electrons to atomic nuclei, physicists love smashing tiny stuff together. And soon, they may have an even better way to get their kicks. A new experiment raises prospects for building a particle accelerator that collides particles called muons, which could lead to smashups of higher energies than any engineered before.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/barrier-colliding-particles-called-muons-has-been-smashed
2/18/2020 8:00 AMFew insects tickle our fancy quite like fireflies. Unlike many other beetles, these critters are widely regarded as beautiful thanks to their bioluminescent qualities, which light up the night skies with a flickering glow. But a new survey published in BioScience has found that humans are putting fireflies at risk of extinction around the globe.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/study-shines-light-urgent-threats-fireflies-180974127/
2/18/2020 10:00 AMTearing across East Africa right now is a plague of biblical proportions: Hundreds of billions of locusts in swarms the size of major cities are laying waste to the crops in their path. It’s the worst outbreak in 25 years in Ethiopia. In Kenya, make that the worst in seven decades.https://www.wired.com/story/the-terrifying-science-behind-the-locust-plagues-of-africa/
2/18/2020 12:00 PMSupermassive black holes have a reputation for consuming everything in their path, from gas clouds to entire solar systems. So is there any way aliens could live on a world that actually orbited one of these cosmic beasts? Surprisingly, the answer is a tentative yes, researchers say, although there are plenty of reasons why life could never take hold in such a place. If it did, living on such a planet would be truly surreal, with the black hole filling nearly half the sky and concentrating leftover photons from the big bang into a pseudosun.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/could-habitable-planet-orbit-black-hole
2/18/2020 2:00 PMhttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-coronaviruses-cause-infection-from-colds-to-deadly-pneumonia1/
2/18/2020 4:00 PMWhile the smallsat industry continues to grow, experts warn that several blind spots could slow its growth in the near future. A report by Bryce Space and Technology found that 389 smallsats — defined as those weighing no more than 600 kilograms — launched in 2019, an increase of nearly 19% over 2018. By comparison, only 52 smallsats launched in 2012.https://spacenews.com/smallsat-industry-faces-challenges-to-growth/
2/18/2020 6:00 PMResearchers have made a whale of a discovery — a hybrid of a beluga whale and a narwhal. DNA analysis of the whale’s skull confirmed it to be the male offspring of a narwhal mother and a beluga father.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dna-confirms-greenland-whale-narwhal-beluga-hybrid
2/19/2020 8:00 AMIn the early 1980s, infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar created a family zoo full of exotic animals in Colombia, including rhinos, giraffes, zebras and hippos. When Escobar’s empire crashed in the ’90s, the animals were relocated to zoos – except for the four hippos (which have since multiplied to 80), now considered an invasive species whose waste is wreaking havoc on the Colombian aquatic ecosystem.https://www.cnet.com/news/pablo-escobars-hippos-have-become-an-invasive-species-in-colombia/
2/19/2020 10:00 AMVirgin Orbit says it is weeks away from the first orbital launch of its LauncherOne rocket as the company makes plans to move quickly into operations if that flight is successful.https://spacenews.com/virgin-orbit-nearing-first-launch/
2/19/2020 12:00 PMOverlapping environmental crises could tip the planet into “global systemic collapse,” more than 200 top scientists warned. Climate change, extreme weather events from hurricanes to heatwaves, the decline of life-sustaining ecosystems, food security and dwindling stores of fresh water—each poses a monumental challenge to humanity in the 21st century.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-multiple-eco-crises-trigger-collapse-scientists.html
2/19/2020 2:00 PMResearchers have successfully grown dates from 2000-year-old seeds recovered from an ancient fortress and caves in the Middle East. The find reveals how ancient farmers were selectively breeding dates from around the region, and it could give clues to how dates can survive for millennia.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/dead-sea-dates-grown-2000-year-old-seeds
2/19/2020 4:00 PMResearchers at Tel Aviv University have for the first time demonstrated the backflow of optical light propagating forward. The phenomenon, theorized more than 50 years ago by quantum physicists, has never before been demonstrated successfully in any experiment—until now.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-optical-backflow.html
2/19/2020 6:00 PMA new study from the University of Ottawa found that in the course of a single human generation, the likelihood of a bumble bee population surviving in a given place has declined by an average of over 30%.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-bumble-bees-extinct-climate-chaos.html
2/20/2020 8:00 AMScientists have demonstrated a key technology in making next-generation high-energy particle accelerators possible.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-world-powerful-particle-big-closer.html
2/20/2020 10:00 AMResearchers have created a unique device which will unlock the elusive terahertz wavelengths and make revolutionary new technologies possible. Terahertz waves (THz) sit between microwaves and infrared in the light frequency spectrum, but due to their low energy, scientists have been unable to harness their potential. The conundrum is known in scientific circles as the “terahertz gap.”https://phys.org/news/2020-02-graphene-amplifier-hidden-frequencies-electromagnetic.html
2/20/2020 12:00 PMSince we haven’t returned to the Moon in almost 50 years, every lunar sample is precious. We need to make them count for researchers now and in the future. In a new study scientists found a new way to analyze the chemistry of the Moon’s soil using a single grain of dust.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-small-grain-moon-giant-lunar.html
2/20/2020 2:00 PMProfessor of biology Paul Garrity, Ph.D. student Chloe Greppi, post-doctoral fellow Willem Laursen and several colleagues report that they’ve figured out an important part of how mosquitoes hone in on human warmth to find and bite people.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-mosquitoes-humans.html
2/20/2020 4:00 PMThe call of the jackass penguin, a wheezing bray that sounds like a donkey in distress, follows some of the same linguistic laws found in human languages, scientists have found. (African penguins are also known as “Jackass” Penguins. This crude nickname refers to the loud, “braying” cry that African penguins make to communicate, which sounds similar to a donkey.)https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/05/jackass-penguin-call-shares-traits-of-human-speech-scientists-say
2/20/2020 6:00 PMLithium batteries power smart phones, laptops, and electric bicycles and cars by storing energy in a very small space. This compact design is usually achieved by winding the thin sandwich of battery electrodes into a cylindrical form. This is because the electrodes must have large surfaces to facilitate high capacity and rapid charging.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-neutrons-x-rays-aging-lithium-batteries.html
2/21/2020 8:00 AMThe largest ever study to analyze entire tumor genomes has provided the most complete picture yet of how DNA glitches drive tumor cell growth. Researchers say the results could pave the way for full genome sequencing of all patients’ tumors. Such sequences could then be used in efforts to match each patient to a molecular treatment.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/massive-cancer-genome-study-reveals-how-dna-errors-drive-tumor-growth
2/21/2020 10:00 AMMethanol is a versatile and efficient chemical used as fuel in the production of countless products. Carbon dioxide (CO2), on the other hand, is a greenhouse gas that is the unwanted byproduct of many industrial processes.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-water-conducting-membrane-carbon-dioxide-fuel.html
2/21/2020 12:00 PMSix date palm plants – Methuselah, Adam, Jonah, Uriel, Boaz, Judith and Hannah – all sat dormant in Judea since biblical times. Now scientists have resurrected them in the hopes of better understanding their vanished lineage.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-scientists-date-palm-year-old-seeds.html
2/21/2020 2:00 PMA completely passive solar-powered desalination system developed by researchers at MIT and in China could provide more than 1.5 gallons of fresh drinking water per hour for every square meter of solar collecting area. Such systems could potentially serve off-grid arid coastal areas to provide an efficient, low-cost water source.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-02-simple-solar-powered-desalination.html
2/21/2020 4:00 PMBoeing is considering another test flight for its CST-100 Starliner commercial crew spacecraft amid concerns from a NASA safety panel about its first flight. Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft launched on Dec. 20, but was unable to dock with the International Space Station as planned because it ended up in the wrong orbit. But of growing concern now are two software problems that were uncovered after the flight was complete.https://www.space.com/boeing-starliner-test-flight-software-defects-report.html
2/21/2020 6:00 PMOcean currents are moving faster today than they did two decades ago. New research finds that this acceleration is occurring around the globe, with the most noticeable effects in the tropical latitudes. The enhanced speed isn’t just at the ocean’s surface, but is occurring as deep as 6,560 feet (2,000 meters).https://www.livescience.com/ocean-currents-speeding-up.html
2/22/2020 8:00 AMResearchers at the University of Sydney have created a new material that has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions released during the refinement process of crude oil by up to 28 percent.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-material-fossil-fuel-industry.html
2/22/2020 10:00 AMSome 4,000 years ago, a tiny population of woolly mammoths died out on Wrangel Island, a remote Arctic refuge off the coast of Siberia. They may have been the last of their kind anywhere on Earth.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-scientists-resurrected-wrangel-island-mammoth.html
2/22/2020 12:00 PMFor the first time, researchers from the Universities of Bonn and Strasbourg have simulated the formation of galaxies in a universe without dark matter. To replicate this process on the computer, they have instead modified Newton’s laws of gravity. The galaxies that were created in the computer calculations are similar to those we actually see today. According to the scientists, their assumptions could solve many mysteries of modern cosmology.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-galaxy-formation-simulated-dark.html
2/22/2020 2:00 PMDeforestation in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil more than doubled in January compared with the previous year. More than 280 square kilometers (110 square miles) were cleared, an increase of 108 percent. It was the largest area cleared in the month of January since 2015, when such data started being collected, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE).https://phys.org/news/2020-02-amazon-deforestation-january.html
2/22/2020 4:00 PMThe Grignard reaction is used to synthesize carbon-carbon bonds, a crucial step for making new molecules for academic and industry uses. Finding efficient and selective methods for this reaction, using low cost materials and minimal energy resources has been the target of the research activity for more than 100 years. Incredibly enough, the way the Grignard reaction works has been unknown—until now. As we finally understand it, ways to its improvement can now open up.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-year-cold-case-grignard-reaction.html
2/22/2020 6:00 PMAsteroids, comets, planets and moons and all kinds of small bodies of rock, metals, minerals and ice are continually moving as they orbit the sun. In contrast to the simple diagrams we’re used to seeing, our solar system is a surprisingly crowded place. In this stunning visualization, biologist Eleanor Lutz painstakingly mapped out every known object in Earth’s solar system (>10km in diameter), hopefully helping you on your next journey through space.https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapping-every-object-in-our-solar-system/
2/23/2020 8:00 AMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10157155307358951
2/23/2020 10:00 AMIf lightning exists on Mars, it may be less energetic and frequent than lightning on Earth, all because of the Red Planet’s thin air, a new study finds.https://www.space.com/mars-lightning-weak-thin-atmosphere.html
2/23/2020 12:00 PMA large team of space scientists working in Canada has found evidence of a fast radio burst with a steady 16-day cycle. The team has published a paper describing their findings on the arXiv preprint server.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-fast-radio-steady-day.html
2/23/2020 2:00 PMA team of researchers at Durham University has found a way to use long-wavelength terahertz radiation to produce video with a high frame rate. In their paper the group describes their technique and its possible uses.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-long-wavelength-terahertz-video-high.html
2/23/2020 4:00 PMThe world is waking up to the fact that human-driven carbon emissions are responsible for warming our climate, driving unprecedented changes to ecosystems, and placing us on course for the sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-scientists-solar-carbon-earth-history.html
2/23/2020 6:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2930978733608593
2/24/2020 8:00 AMQuantum engineers from UNSW Sydney have created artificial atoms in silicon chips that offer improved stability for quantum computing.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-artificial-atoms-stable-qubits-quantum.html
2/24/2020 10:00 AMThe mystery of the “alien megastructure” star may finally be settled. In 2015, a rumor spread about the star KIC 8462852. It was proposed that the star might harbor an alien race. The rumor stemmed from the star’s unusually unstable brightness. One explanation for the behavior was an alien megastructure called a “Dyson swarm.” Now, that possibility has been ruled out.https://www.businessinsider.com/tabbys-star-kic-8462852-mystery-explained-dust-cloud-2017-10
2/24/2020 12:00 PMA planet-hunting probe has taken its first photos, and they’re better than expected! CHEOPS (CHaracterising ExOplanets Satellite)’s cover opened on Jan. 29, 2020; the team behind the satellite waited with bated breath for the device to snap its first images, confirming that everything was working properly and nothing was damaged during launch. Not only did the first images confirm that CHEOPS is working properly – they also turned out better than anticipated.https://www.space.com/cheops-exoplanet-hunting-satellite-first-photos.html
2/24/2020 2:00 PMAt a time when women were considered intellectually inferior to men, Emmy Noether (pronounced NUR-ter) won the admiration of her male colleagues. She resolved a nagging puzzle in Albert Einstein’s newfound theory of gravity, the general theory of relativity. And in the process, she proved a revolutionary mathematical theorem that changed the way physicists study the universe.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/emmy-noether-theorem-legacy-physics-math
2/24/2020 4:00 PMThe fossilized tail of a young dinosaur that lived on a prairie in southern Alberta, Canada, is home to the remains of a 60-million-year-old tumor.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-disease-fossilized-dinosaur-tail-afflicts.html
2/24/2020 6:00 PMVoyager 2 passed through the borderland between the Sun and interstellar space and found something new and puzzling that Voyager 1 missed.https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3a987/nasa-has-found-a-weird-unexplained-boundary-in-interstellar-space
2/25/2020 8:00 AMA mysterious object in a galaxy 500 million light-years away is confusing scientists with its signals. It appears to be transmitting signals that reach Earth in a repeating, 16-day pattern, but researchers have no idea why.https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fast-radio-burst-frb-deep-space-sending-signals-earth-every-16-days/
2/25/2020 10:00 AMRising ocean temperatures drove the melting of Antarctic ice sheets and caused extreme sea level rise more than 100,000 years ago, a new international study led by UNSW Sydney shows.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-ancient-antarctic-ice-sea-metersand.html
2/25/2020 12:00 PMBeetle parasites clinging to a primitive bee 100 million years ago may have caused the flight error that, while deadly for the insect, is a boon for science today.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-fossilized-insect-million-years-oldest.html
2/25/2020 2:00 PMBlue Canyon Technologies (BCT) announced plans to supply its X-SAT small satellite for Made In Space’s Archinaut One on-orbit manufacturing demonstration mission.https://spacenews.com/bct-archinaut-one/
2/25/2020 4:00 PMA team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in China has succeeded in sending entangled quantum memories over a 50-kilometer coiled fiber cable. In their paper the group describes several experiments they conducted involving entangling quantum memory over long distances, the challenges they overcame, and problems still to be addressed.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-quantum-memories-entangled-kilometer-cable.html
2/25/2020 6:00 PMThe stars are turning the space between them into a field of cosmic magnifying glasses, and that’s screwing with our view of a star much farther away.https://www.livescience.com/invisible-stars-gravitational-lensing.html
2/26/2020 8:00 AMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10157169879733951
2/26/2020 10:00 AMUsing ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have captured the unprecedented dimming of Betelgeuse, a red supergiant star in the constellation of Orion. The stunning new images of the star’s surface show not only the fading red supergiant but also how its apparent shape is changing.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-eso-telescope-surface-dim-betelgeuse.html
2/26/2020 12:00 PMEven under modest climate warming scenarios, the continental United States faces a significant loss of groundwater—about 119 million cubic meters, or roughly enough to fill Lake Powell four times or one quarter of Lake Erie, a first-of-its-kind study has shown.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-groundwater-depletes-arid-american-west.html
2/26/2020 2:00 PMThe Breakthrough Listen Initiative today released data from the most comprehensive survey yet of radio emissions from the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy and the region around its central black hole, and it is inviting the public to search the data for signals from intelligent civilizations.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-breakthrough-petabytes-seti-survey-milky.html
2/26/2020 4:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10157249498658721
2/26/2020 6:00 PMA research team led by professors from the University of Pittsburgh Department of Physics and Astronomy has announced the discovery of a new electronic state of matter.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-uncovers-electronic-state.html
2/27/2020 8:00 AMA prototype of a British-built plasma-powered rocket engine which could propel spacecraft at 100,000mph, thus halving journey times to Mars, has been tested successfully in the UK.https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1240294/science-news-mars-space-travel-nuclear-fusion-plasma-brexit-space-sector-made-in-chelsea
2/27/2020 10:00 AMAssuming that alien life will be similar to what evolved here on Earth could severely limit the potential for big discoveries, researchers said.https://www.space.com/alien-life-hunt-not-limited-earth-like-life.html
2/27/2020 12:00 PMSaturn’s moon Enceladus, with a diameter of 314 miles (505 kilometers), is small enough to fit inside the borders of the state of Arizona. This tiny satellite is one of the most promising potential sites for hosting life in the solar system. Despite its frigid temperatures, the moon hosts liquid water beneath its surface that appears to directly contact the rocky seafloor, making complex chemical reactions possible — such as those reactions that lead to life.https://www.space.com/20543-enceladus-saturn-s-tiny-shiny-moon.html
2/27/2020 2:00 PMBeyond Earth’s atmosphere are swirling clouds of energized particles — ions and electrons — that emanate from the sun. This “solar wind” buffets the magnetosphere, the magnetic force field that surrounds Earth. A new study by the NASA THEMIS mission team — led by Vassilis Angelopoulos, a UCLA professor of space physics — is the first to show that such storms can originate much closer to Earth than previously thought, overlapping with the orbits of critical weather, communications and GPS satellites. The team’s findings are published in the journal Nature Physics.https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/space-weather-discovered-too-close-to-home
2/27/2020 4:00 PMScientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a device that uses a natural protein to create electricity from moisture in the air, a new technology they say could have significant implications for the future of renewable energy, climate change and in the future of medicine.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-green-technology-electricity-thin-air.html
2/27/2020 6:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=532443770810792
2/28/2020 8:00 AMPine Island Glacier, one of the fastest-shrinking glaciers in Antarctica, has just lost another huge chunk of ice to the sea, continuing a troubling trend that has become a near-annual occurrence in the last decade.https://www.livescience.com/pine-island-glacier-calving-retreat.html
2/28/2020 10:00 AMScientists have taken a major step toward a circular carbon economy by developing a long-lasting, economical catalyst that recycles greenhouse gases into ingredients that can be used in fuel, hydrogen gas, and other chemicals. The results could be revolutionary in the effort to reverse global warming, according to the researchers.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-catalyst-recycles-greenhouse-gases-fuel.html
2/28/2020 12:00 PMA double star system has been flipping between two alter egos, according to observations with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation’s Karl F. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). Using nearly a decade and a half worth of Chandra data, researchers noticed that a stellar duo behaved like one type of object before switching its identity, and then returning to its original state after a few years. This is a rare example of a star system changing its behavior in this way.https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/cosmic-jekyll-and-hyde.html
2/28/2020 2:00 PMOne of South America’s most prominent volcanoes is producing early warning signals of a potential collapse, new research has shown.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-south-american-volcano-early-potential.html
2/28/2020 4:00 PMhttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-first-molecule-in-the-universe/
2/28/2020 6:00 PMA team of physicists at the University of Sussex has successfully developed the first nonlinear camera capable of capturing high-resolution images of the interior of solid objects using terahertz (THz) radiation.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-combine-lasers-terahertz-camera-unseen.html
2/29/2020 8:00 AMhttps://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/02/19/science.abb2507
2/29/2020 10:00 AMhttps://www.facebook.com/ScienceChannel/videos/281265562849697/?v=281265562849697
2/29/2020 12:00 PMNASA’s Juno mission has provided its first science results on the amount of water in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Published recently in the journal Nature Astronomy, the Juno results estimate that at the equator, water makes up about 0.25% of the molecules in Jupiter’s atmosphere—almost three times that of the Sun. These are also the first findings on the gas giant’s abundance of water since the agency’s 1995 Galileo mission suggested Jupiter might be extremely dry compared to the Sun (the comparison is based not on liquid water but on the presence of its components, oxygen and hydrogen, present in the Sun).https://phys.org/news/2020-02-nasa-juno-jupiter-mystery.html
2/29/2020 2:00 PMThe search for present-day life on Mars is heating up. And for good reason: An improved knowledge of Mars’ geologic diversity and history, a better appreciation of life in extreme environments here on Earth, and a sharp focus on sensitive life-detection measurement methods are all bolstering the Mars-life hunt, giving scientists more reason to think that they just might find something.https://www.space.com/alien-life-hunt-mars-underground.html
2/29/2020 4:00 PMFor three years, anthropologist Alan Rogers has attempted to solve an evolutionary puzzle. His research untangles millions of years of human evolution by analyzing DNA strands from ancient human species known as hominins. Like many evolutionary geneticists, Rogers compares hominin genomes looking for genetic patterns such as mutations and shared genes. He develops statistical methods that infer the history of ancient human populations.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-earliest-interbreeding-event-ancient-human.html
2/29/2020 6:00 PMHow are we able to find things in the dark? And how can we imagine how something feels just by looking at it? It is because our brain is able to store information in such a way that it can be retrieved by different senses. This multi-sensory integration allows us to form mental images of the world and underpins our conscious awareness.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-bumblebees.html
3/1/2020 8:00 AMhttps://www.facebook.com/natgeo/videos/527823274512594/?v=527823274512594
3/1/2020 10:00 AMT 10
3/1/2020 12:00 PMThe precursor of our planet, the proto-Earth, formed within a time span of approximately five million years, shows a new study from the Centre for Star and Planet Formation (StarPlan) at the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-earth-faster-previously-thought.html
3/1/2020 2:00 PMAstronomers from the University of Warwick have observed an exoplanet orbiting a star in just over 18 hours, the shortest orbital period ever observed for a planet of its type.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-eighteen-hour-year-planet-edge-destruction.html
3/1/2020 4:00 PMEnough water will come from the ground as a byproduct of oil production from unconventional reservoirs during the coming decades to theoretically counter the need to use fresh water for hydraulic fracturing operations in many of the nation’s large oil-producing areas. But while other industries, such as agriculture, might want to recycle some of that water for their own needs, water quality issues and the potential costs involved mean it could be best to keep the water in the oil patch.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-reuse-key-future-hydraulic-fracturing.html
3/1/2020 6:00 PMThe massive Colorado River, which provides water for seven US states, has seen its flow reduced by 20 percent over the course of a century—and more than half of that loss is due to climate change, according to new research.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-climate-colorado-river.html
3/2/2020 8:00 AMA group of 27 prominent public health scientists from outside China is pushing back against a steady stream of stories and even a scientific paper suggesting a laboratory in Wuhan, China, may be the origin of the outbreak of COVID-19. “The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins,” the scientists, from nine countries, write in a statement published online.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/scientists-strongly-condemn-rumors-and-conspiracy-theories-about-origin-coronavirus
3/2/2020 10:00 AMT 10
3/2/2020 12:00 PMSurprising new data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope suggests the smooth, settled “brim” of the Sombrero galaxy’s disk may be concealing a turbulent past. Hubble’s sharpness and sensitivity resolves tens of thousands of individual stars in the Sombrero’s vast, extended halo, the region beyond a galaxy’s central portion, typically made of older stars. These latest observations of the Sombrero are turning conventional theory on its head, showing only a tiny fraction of older, metal-poor stars in the halo, plus an unexpected abundance of metal-rich stars typically found only in a galaxy’s disk, and the central bulge. Past major galaxy mergers are a possible explanation, though the stately Sombrero shows none of the messy evidence of a recent merger of massive galaxies.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-brim-sombrero-galaxy-halo-turbulent.html
3/2/2020 2:00 PMIn a new paper, climate scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution propose that massive amounts of melting sea ice in the Arctic drained into the North Atlantic and disrupted climate-steering currents, thus playing an important role in causing past abrupt climate change after the last Ice Age, from about 8,000 to 13,000 years ago.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-huge-arctic-sea-ice-contributed.html
3/2/2020 4:00 PMChina’s Yutu-2 lunar rover has discovered what appear to be relatively young rocks during its recent exploration activities on the lunar far side.https://www.space.com/china-chang-e-4-moon-rover-finds-young-rocks.html
3/2/2020 6:00 PMA signal originally detected by the Kepler spacecraft has been validated as an exoplanet using the Habitable-zone Planet Finder (HPF), an astronomical spectrograph built by a Penn State team and recently installed on the 10m Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory in Texas. The HPF provides the highest precision measurements to date of infrared signals from nearby low-mass stars, and astronomers used it to validate the candidate planet by excluding all possibilities of contaminating signals to very high level of probability.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-sub-neptune-sized-planet-validated-habitable-zone.html
3/3/2020 8:00 AMA team of scientists led by Elizabeth Boatman at the University of Wisconsin Stout used infrared and X-ray imaging and spectromicroscopy performed at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS) to demonstrate how soft tissue structures may be preserved in dinosaur bones—countering the long-standing scientific dogma that protein-based body parts cannot survive more than 1 million years.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-dinosaur-blood-vessels-ages.html
3/3/2020 10:00 AMT 10
3/3/2020 12:00 PMhttps://sciencex.com/news/2020-02-iberian-appalachian-unveils-deep-view-interior.html
3/3/2020 2:00 PMWhen the ponds where one African fish lives dry up, its offspring put their lives on pause. And now researchers have a sense for how the creatures do it. African turquoise killifish embryos can halt their development during a state of suspended activity called diapause. Now a study shows that the embryos effectively don’t age while in that state. Genetic analyses reveal that, to stay frozen in time, the embryos put functions such as cell growth and organ development on hold.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-african-turquoise-killifish-press-pause-button-aging
3/3/2020 4:00 PMThe ALPHA collaboration at CERN has reported the first measurements of certain quantum effects in the energy structure of antihydrogen, the antimatter counterpart of hydrogen. These quantum effects are known to exist in matter, and studying them could reveal as yet unobserved differences between the behavior of matter and antimatter. The results show that these first measurements are consistent with theoretical predictions of the effects in “normal” hydrogen, and pave the way for more precise measurements of these and other fundamental quantities.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-alpha-collaboration-quantum-effects-antimatter.html
3/3/2020 6:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/nasaearth/videos/204171747635177/?v=204171747635177
3/4/2020 8:00 AMFor the first time, researchers have used light to control the shape of nanoparticles and create micron-size hollow shells from crystals of cuprous oxide (copper and oxygen). Such particles could have future applications as a low-cost catalyst to help pull excess carbon dioxide from the air, a way to improve microscopic imaging and more, says Bryce Sadtler, a chemist at Washington University in St. Louis and senior author of a study on the new method.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-sculpt-nanoparticle-shells-with-light/
3/4/2020 10:00 AMT 10
3/4/2020 12:00 PMString theory is a purported theory of everything that physicists hope will one day explain … everything. All the forces, all the particles, all the constants, all the things under a single theoretical roof, where everything that we see is the result of tiny, vibrating strings. Theorists have been working on the idea since the 1960s, and one of the first things they realized is that for the theory to work, there have to be more dimensions than the four we’re used to.https://www.space.com/more-universe-dimensions-for-string-theory.html
3/4/2020 2:00 PMhttps://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6480/852
3/4/2020 4:00 PMWhile many of us worry about proteins aggregating in our brains as we age and potentially causing Alzheimer’s disease or other types of neurodegeneration, we may not realize that some of the same proteins are aggregating in our muscles, setting us up for muscle atrophy in old age.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-brain-cells-muscles.html
3/4/2020 6:00 PMScientists have recovered DNA from a well-preserved horned lark found in Siberian permafrost. The results can contribute to explaining the evolution of sub species, as well as how the mammoth steppe transformed into tundra, forest and steppe biomes at the end of the last Ice Age.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-frozen-bird-year-old-horned-lark.html
3/5/2020 8:00 AMA star of about eight percent the Sun’s mass has been caught emitting an enormous ‘super flare’ of X-rays—a dramatic high-energy eruption that poses a fundamental problem for astronomers, who did not think it possible on stars that small.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-xmm-newton-reveals-giant-flare-tiny.html
3/5/2020 10:00 AMT 10
3/5/2020 12:00 PMA cooling, drying climate over the last 40 million years turned North America from a warm and wooded place into the drier, open plains we know today. A new study shows how dogs evolved in response to those changes, demonstrating that predators are sensitive to climate change because it alters the hunting opportunities in their habitat.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/fossil-study-dogs-evolved-with-climate-change/
3/5/2020 2:00 PMThree scientists from the University of Chicago have run the numbers, and they believe there may be a way to make a material that could conduct both electricity and energy with 100% efficiency—never losing any to heat or friction.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-scientists-state-electricity-energy-perfectly.html
3/5/2020 4:00 PMLightning—one, two, three—and thunder. For centuries, people have estimated the distance of a thunderstorm from the time between lightning and thunder. The greater the time gap between the two signals, the further away the observer is from the location of the lightning. This is because lightning propagates at the speed of light with almost no time delay, while thunder propagates at the much slower speed of sound of around 340 metres per second.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-earthquakes-deform-gravity.html
3/5/2020 6:00 PMCassini data shows Saturn’s complex ionosphere is greatly influenced by ring shade and possibly “ring rain.” Sidenote, yes, we know it’s an older article, but we still find it fascinating.https://astronomy.com/news/2017/12/saturns-ionosphere
3/6/2020 8:00 AMhttps://www.sfgate.com/cnet/article/NASA-stares-into-dark-freaky-pit-on-Mars-15074143.php
3/6/2020 10:00 AMT 10
3/6/2020 12:00 PMResearchers from the MPSD and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in the United States have discovered a significant new fundamental kind of quantum electronic oscillation, or plasmon, in atomically thin materials. It has potential implications for novel imaging techniques and photochemical reactions at the nanoscale.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-plasmons-atomic-flatland.html
3/6/2020 2:00 PMA fossilised insect wing discovered in an abandoned mine in Labrador has led palaeontologists from McGill University to identify a new hairy cicada species that lived around 100 million years ago.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-fossilized-wing-clues-labrador-biodiversity.html
3/6/2020 4:00 PMNASA shared an eerie image of what was once a lake larger than the Caspian Sea in central Africa. Called Mega Chad, this massive body of water stretched 150,000 square miles across the Sahara and would have been the largest on Earth today.https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8025979/NASA-image-reveals-remains-ancient-lake-stretched-Sahara-7-000-years-ago.html
3/6/2020 6:00 PMhttps://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/after-decades-decline-us-national-fusion-lab-seeks-rebirth
3/7/2020 8:00 AMIt takes a lot of fuel to launch something into space. Sending NASA’s Space Shuttle into orbit required more than 3.5 million pounds of fuel, which is about 15 times heavier than a blue whale.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-02-simple-fuel-efficient-rocket-enable-cheaper.html
3/7/2020 10:00 AMT 10
3/7/2020 12:00 PMAn international team of researchers has found a multicellular animal with no mitochondrial DNA, making it the only known animal to exist without the need to breathe oxygen. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their study of Henneguya salminicola, a microscopic, parasitic member of the group Myxozoa and its unique physiology.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-henneguya-salminicola-microscopic-parasite-mitochondrial.html
3/7/2020 2:00 PMScientists studying a distant galaxy cluster have discovered the biggest explosion seen in the Universe since the Big Bang.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-astronomers-biggest-explosion-history-universe.html
3/7/2020 4:00 PMEarth has acquired a second “mini-moon” about the size of a car, according to astronomers who spotted the object circling our planet. The mass — roughly 1.9-3.5 meters (6-11 feet) in diameter — was observed by researchers Kacper Wierzchos and Teddy Pruyne at the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona on the night of February 15.https://phys.org/news/2020-02-earth-captures-mini-moon.html
3/7/2020 6:00 PMA new study may help answer one of the universe’s biggest mysteries: Why is there more matter than antimatter? That answer, in turn, could explain why everything from atoms to black holes exists.https://www.livescience.com/phase-transition-allowed-neutrinos-shuffle-matter.html
3/8/2020 8:00 AMSpaceX is planning a huge boost to the number of rocket launches from its Florida launch sites in the next few years as the company builds its Starlink satellite megaconstellation while meeting flight demands from its customers, according to a federal environmental report.https://www.space.com/spacex-rocket-launch-rate-boost-mobile-service-tower.html
3/8/2020 10:00 AMT 10
3/8/2020 12:00 PMClimate change and sea level rise are currently on track to wipe out half the world’s sandy beaches by 2100, researchers warned.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-world-beaches.html
3/8/2020 2:00 PMLockheed Martin says it lost $410 million on the first three commercial satellites built on its new LM2100 platform, including the JCSAT-17 satellite Arianespace launched Feb. 18 on an Ariane 5 rocket.https://spacenews.com/lockheed-martin-lost-410-million-on-latest-three-commercial-satellite-orders/
3/8/2020 4:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/ScienceChannel/videos/747137642359489/?v=747137642359489
3/8/2020 6:00 PMThe resting place of ancient armadillos that roamed the earth some 20,000 years ago has been discovered in Argentina. A farmer stumbled upon the graveyard containing fossilized shells of four massive Glyptodonts, with the largest being the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8038783/Shells-20-000-year-old-armadillos-size-Volkswagen-Beetles-Argentina.html
3/9/2020 8:00 AMIn research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute demonstrate how they can overcome a persistent challenge known as dendrites to create a metal battery that performs nearly as well as a lithium-ion battery, but relies on potassium—a much more abundant and less expensive element.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-03-potassium-metal-battery-emerges-rival.html
3/9/2020 10:00 AMT 10
3/9/2020 12:00 PMNASA faces a difficult choice: What does the agency want to select as its next big space telescope, the instrument that will shape scientists’ research in the 2040s?https://www.space.com/luvoir-space-telescope-understanding-habitability.html
3/9/2020 2:00 PMA massive white dwarf star with a bizarre carbon-rich atmosphere could be two white dwarfs merged together according to an international team led by University of Warwick astronomers, and only narrowly avoided destruction.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-stars-merged-massive-white-dwarf.html
3/9/2020 4:00 PMA group of scientists from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science in Japan has succeeded in taking repeated measurements of the spin of an electron in a silicon quantum dot (QD) without changing its spin in the process. This type of “non-demolition” measurement is important for creating quantum computers that are fault-tolerant. Quantum computers would make it easier to perform certain classes of calculations such as many-body problems, which are extremely difficult and time-consuming for conventional computers. Essentially, the involve measuring a quantum value that is never in a single state like a conventional transistor, but instead exists as a “superimposed state”—in the same way that Schrodinger’s famous cat cannot be said to be alive or dead until it is observed. Using such systems, it is possible to conduct calculations with a qubit that is a superimposition of two values, and then determine statistically what the correct result is. Quantum computers that use single electron spins in silicon QDs are seen as attractive due to their potential scalability and because silicon is already widely used in electronics technology.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-scientists-electron-qubit-demolishing.html
3/9/2020 6:00 PMA collaboration of a mathematician and a physicist has shown that the modular forms associated with elliptic curves with complex multiplications are expressed in terms of observables in superstring theory.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-theory-link-class-complex.html
3/10/2020 8:00 AMWorkers snap the miniature rocket’s wings into place as Indonesia’s little-known space agency readies its latest launch on barren scrubland in East Java.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-blast-space-minnow-indonesia-eyes.html
3/10/2020 10:00 AMT 10
3/10/2020 12:00 PMNorthrop Grumman’s satellite servicing spacecraft successfully docked with an Intelsat communications satellite Feb. 25 in a bid to keep the nearly 19-year-old satellite in service an additional five years, Northrop Grumman and Intelsat executives said.https://spacenews.com/northrop-grummans-mev-1-servicer-docks-with-intelsat-satellite/
3/10/2020 2:00 PMWhat did Earth look like 3.2 billion years ago? New evidence suggests the planet was covered by a vast ocean and had no continents at all. Continents appeared later, as plate tectonics thrust enormous, rocky land masses upward to breach the sea surfaces, scientists recently reported.https://www.livescience.com/waterworld-earth.html
3/10/2020 4:00 PMScientists have identified a sub-atomic particle that could have formed the “dark matter” in the Universe during the Big Bang. Up to 80% of the Universe could be dark matter, but despite many decades of study, its physical origin has remained an enigma. While it cannot be seen directly, scientists know it exists because of its interaction via gravity with visible matter like stars and planets. Dark matter is composed of particles that do not absorb, reflect or emit light.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-scientists-mystery-dark.html
3/10/2020 6:00 PMUS manufacturing and technology group Honeywell said Tuesday it will bring to market “the world’s most powerful quantum computer” aimed at tackling complex scientific and business challenges.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-honeywell-unveils-powerful-quantum.html
3/11/2020 8:00 AMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=saved&v=4161593073854677
3/11/2020 10:00 AMhttps://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-probe-exploring-asteroid-snaps-black-hole-image
3/11/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2762204463892065
3/11/2020 2:00 PMhttps://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/75millionyearold-dna-found-preserved-in-baby-duckbilled-dinosaur-/
3/11/2020 4:00 PMA protein known to help cells defend against infection also regulates the form and function of mitochondria, according to a new paper. The protein, one of a group called myxovirus-resistance (Mx) proteins, help cells fight infections without the use of systemic antibodies or white blood cells. The authors report that MxB, which is associated with immune response to HIV and herpes virus, is key to mitochondrial support.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-cells-defend-viruses.html
3/11/2020 6:00 PMA remarkable new treasure has been found by scientists from the University of Portsmouth – the first fossil plant gum on record. The beautiful, amber-like material has been discovered in 110 million year old fossilised leaves.https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-02/uop-bgs022420.php
3/12/2020 8:00 AMAstronomers have pondered for years why our galaxy, the Milky Way, is warped. Data from ESA’s star-mapping satellite Gaia suggest the distortion might be caused by an ongoing collision with another, smaller, galaxy, which sends ripples through the galactic disc like a rock thrown into water.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-milky-warp-galactic-collision-gaia.html
3/12/2020 10:00 AMA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spacecraft that provides space weather data and Earth imagery is back in service, nine months after suffering a technical problem.https://spacenews.com/dscovr-back-in-operation/
3/12/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=saved&v=593511101231584
3/12/2020 2:00 PMAccording to popular theory, men live shorter lives than women because they take bigger risks, have more dangerous jobs, drink and smoke more, and are poor at seeking advice from doctors.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-men-male-animals-die-younger.html
3/12/2020 4:00 PMA study published in Scientific Reports shows that stony corals, which provide food and shelter for almost a quarter of all ocean species, are preparing for a major extinction event.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-reef-building-coral-disaster-traits-akin.html
3/12/2020 6:00 PMAccording to a media report from SpaceNews, the ExoMars mission “could be condemned to delay” even before the crucial parachute tests are performed in late March. The heads of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, the two main partners on the mission, are supposed to meet today to discuss mission progress.https://www.space.com/exomars-rover-parachute-problems-2020-launch-delay-possible.html
3/13/2020 8:00 AMAn international team of scientists have discovered a new material that can be 3-D printed to create tissue-like vascular structures.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-biomaterial-discovery-enables-d-tissue-like.html
3/13/2020 10:00 AMOne of the hallmarks of cancer is cell immortality. A Northwestern University organic chemist and his team now have developed a promising molecular tool that targets and inhibits one of cell immortality’s underlying gears: the enzyme telomerase.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-chemists-inhibit-critical-gear-cell.html
3/13/2020 12:00 PMThe size of a star is a natural consequence of the balance between the inward pull of gravity and the outward pressure of radiation produced inside the star. When these two forces are balanced, the outer layers of the star are stable and said to be in hydrostatic equilibrium. In general, both the gravitational force and the energy generation rate are determined by the mass of a star. During most of their lives, stars burn hydrogen in their cores, and their structures are almost completely determined by their masses. Later in their lifetimes, energy is generated in a shell surrounding their cores, and the outer layers expand, such as in the red supergiant (for higher-mass stars) and red giant (for lower-mass stars) phases.https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2018/06/big-stars
3/13/2020 2:00 PMTasmania’s ancient rainforest faces a grim future as a warming climate and the way people used the land have brought significant changes to the island state off mainland Australia’s southeastern coast, according to a new Portland State University study.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-ancient-australian-trees-uncertain-future.html
3/13/2020 4:00 PMTo heat a slice of pizza, you probably wouldn’t consider first chilling it in the fridge. But a theoretical study suggests that cooling, as a first step before heating, may be the fastest way to warm up certain materials. In fact, such precooling could lead sometimes to exponentially faster heating, two physicists calculate in a study accepted in Physical Review Letters.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-mpemba-effect-fastest-materials-cool.html
3/13/2020 6:00 PMWhen the parasitic blob known as Henneguya salminicola sinks its spores into the flesh of a tasty fish, it does not hold its breath. That’s because H. salminicola is the only known animal on Earth that does not breathe.https://www.livescience.com/first-non-breathing-animal.html
3/14/2020 8:00 AMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=saved&v=521839932068372
3/14/2020 10:00 AMLooking for life traditionally starts with finding a planet with the right temperature to host liquid water — but scientists are working to find new criteria for tracking down potentially habitable worlds.https://www.space.com/using-star-chemistry-to-look-for-life.html
3/14/2020 12:00 PMNASA’s Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) is moving forward on development even as President Donald Trump’s administration tries to cancel the mission, for the third budget in a row.https://www.space.com/wfirst-telescope-moves-forward-trump-budget-cut.html
3/14/2020 2:00 PMNASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has given us its sharpest-ever view of the Red Planet. The Curiosity team just released a 1.8-billion-pixel panorama that features Glen Torridon, a region on the flanks of Mars’ 3.4-mile-high (5.5 kilometers) Mount Sharp that the rover has been exploring recently.https://www.space.com/mars-rover-curiosity-biggest-panorama-photo-ever.html
3/14/2020 4:00 PMOrganic compounds called thiophenes are found on Earth in coal, crude oil and oddly enough, in white truffles, the mushroom beloved by epicureans and wild pigs. Thiophenes were also recently discovered on Mars, and Washington State University astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch thinks their presence would be consistent with the presence of early life on Mars.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-molecules-curiosity-rover-early-life.html
3/14/2020 6:00 PMFlorida State University physicists believe they have an answer to unusual incidents of rare decay of a subatomic particle called a Kaon that were reported last year by scientists in the KOTO experiment at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-physics-subatomic-particle.html
3/15/2020 8:00 AMA lithium-ion battery that is safe, has high power and can last for 1 million miles has been developed by a team in Penn State’s Battery and Energy Storage Technology (BEST) Center.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-03-high-energy-li-ion-battery-safer.html
3/15/2020 10:00 AMStratolaunch plans to resume test flights of its giant aircraft later this year as the company continues its shift from a launch services company to a provider of high-speed flight test services.https://spacenews.com/stratolaunch-to-resume-test-flights-in-september/
3/15/2020 12:00 PMNASA’s next Mars rover finally has a name. Perseverance, a six-wheeled robotic explorer, will blast off this summer to collect Martian samples for eventual return to Earth.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-perseverance-mars-rover-july.html
3/15/2020 2:00 PMhttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/crispr-treatment-inserted-directly-into-the-body-for-the-first-time/
3/15/2020 4:00 PMBy 2030, global warming alone could push Chicago to generate 12% more electricity per person each month of the summer. Any less than that, and the city would be risking a power shortage that may require drastic measures to avoid rolling blackouts, according to projections from a model designed by Purdue University researchers.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-accurate-climate-reveals-bleaker-outlook.html
3/15/2020 6:00 PMChlamydia are infamous for causing sexually transmitted infections in humans and animals or even amoeba. An international team of researchers have now discovered diverse populations of abundant Chlamydia living in deep Arctic ocean sediments. They live under oxygen-devoid conditions, high pressure and without an apparent host organism. Their study, published in Current Biology today, provides new insights into how Chlamydia became human and animal pathogens.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-chlamydia-related-bacteria-deep-arctic-ocean.html
3/16/2020 8:00 AMA team of researchers from France, Germany and Belgium has found evidence that neither nature nor nurture leads to personality differences—it is the result of nonheritable noise during brain development. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their study of behavior in Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies) and what they learned.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-fruit-nature-nurture-responsible-individuality.html
3/16/2020 10:00 AMLate last year, news broke that the star Betelgeuse was fading significantly, ultimately dropping to around 40% of its usual brightness. The activity fueled popular speculation that the red supergiant would soon explode as a massive supernova.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-dimming-betelgeuse-isnt-cold-dusty.html
3/16/2020 12:00 PMAsteroid Bennu’s most prominent boulder, a rock chunk jutting out 71 ft (21.7 m) from the asteroid’s southern hemisphere, finally has a name. The boulder—which is so large that it was initially detected from Earth—is officially designated Benben Saxum after the primordial hill that first arose from the dark waters in an ancient Egyptian creation myth.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-features-asteroid-bennu.html
3/16/2020 2:00 PMAn international team of lepidopterists has compiled the most comprehensive evolutionary tree for butterflies to date.http://www.sci-news.com/biology/butterfly-evolutionary-tree-05743.html
3/16/2020 4:00 PMIf the Barringer Meteor Crater impact event in Arizona occurred in a modern city, it would completely destroy it. As the question implies, distance from the point of impact is directly related to one’s survival. The key to determining a safe distance lies in the energy of the impact event. The crater formed when an asteroid hit about 50,000 years ago, and resulting blast sent catastrophic winds out at some 900 mph (1,500 km/h) across the immediate area, instantly killing animals unfortunate enough to witness the impact close up.https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2015/04/blast-radius
3/16/2020 6:00 PMResearchers have generated a wide range of colors from a single laser after discovering a new process for achieving so-called “supercontinuum generation.” Supercontinuum generation is when intense laser light of one color travels within a material, like glass, and broadens into a spectrum of colors.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-crystal-supercontinuum-breakthrough.html
3/17/2020 8:00 AMHuman fingers are sculpted from a primitive pad-like structure during embryonic development. Sometimes, this process goes awry and babies are born with fused fingers or toes. A new study from the University of California, Irvine reveals new factors involved in the congenital malformation called syndactyly.https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-02/uoc–san022720.php
3/17/2020 10:00 AMA star that pulsates on just one side has been discovered in the Milky Way about 1500 light years from Earth. It is the first of its kind to be found and scientists expect to find many more similar systems as technology to listen inside the beating hearts of stars improves.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-pulsating-star.html
3/17/2020 12:00 PMEarth turned faster at the end of the time of the dinosaurs than it does today, rotating 372 times a year, compared to the current 365, according to a new study of fossil mollusk shells from the late Cretaceous. This means a day lasted only 23 and a half hours, according to the new study.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-ancient-shell-days-half-hour-shorter.html
3/17/2020 2:00 PMNew results from precision particle detectors at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) offer a fresh glimpse of the particle interactions that take place in the cores of neutron stars and give nuclear physicists a new way to search for violations of fundamental symmetries in the universe.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-strange-glimpse-neutron-stars-symmetry.html
3/17/2020 4:00 PMThe natural coastal defenses provided by mangrove forests reduce annual flooding significantly in critical hotspots around the world. Without mangroves, flood damages would increase by more than $65 billion annually, and 15 million more people would be flooded, according to a new study.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-mangrove.html
3/17/2020 6:00 PMhttps://www.space.com/mars-odyssey-nasa-2021-budget-request-cut.html
3/17/2020 9:00 PMAs humans have spread across the world, so have infectious diseases. Even in this modern era, outbreaks are nearly constant, though not every outbreak reaches pandemic level as the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) has. This visualization outlines some of history’s most deadly pandemics, from the Antonine Plague to the current COVID-19 event.https://www.visualcapitalist.com/history-of-pandemics-deadliest/
3/18/2020 8:00 AMTurtle ant soldiers look like real-life creatures straight out of a Japanese anime film. These tree-dwelling insects scuttle to and fro sporting shiny, adorably oversized heads, which they use to block the entrances of their nests—essentially acting as living doors.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-soldier-ants-reveals-evolution-reverse.html
3/18/2020 10:00 AMhttps://www.vice.com/en_in/article/xgq7zj/nasa-found-hole-on-mars-could-contain-alien-life
3/18/2020 12:00 PMMeet Eurythenes plasticus, a newly identified amphipod found in one of the deepest places on Earth named after the plastic found to contaminate its gut. Though the coin-sized scavenger is new to science and lives in the remote ocean, its plastic contamination shows that it is not exempt from the impacts of human pollution on our planet.https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/new-species-found-in-the-worlds-deepest-trench-named-after-the-plastic-found-in-its-gut/
3/18/2020 2:00 PMLeiden chemists have created a new ultrathin membrane only one molecule thick. The membrane can produce a hundred times more power from seawater than the best membranes used today.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-carbon-membrane-power.html
3/18/2020 4:00 PMWearing clothes can release even greater quantities of microfibres to the environment than washing them, new research shows.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-microfibres-environment.html
3/18/2020 6:00 PMA computational approach inspired by the growth patterns of a bright yellow slime mold has enabled a team of astronomers and computer scientists at UC Santa Cruz to trace the filaments of the cosmic web that connects galaxies throughout the universe.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-astronomers-slime-mold-reveal-dark.html
3/19/2020 8:00 AMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1611052365719059
3/19/2020 10:00 AMA USC-led study shows that squatting and kneeling may be important resting positions in human evolution—and even for modern human health.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-hunter-gatherer-humans-rest-affect-heart.html
3/19/2020 12:00 PMScientists have discovered the most ancient and distant “blazar,” a galaxy with a supermassive black hole that spews out mind-boggling amounts of light, at the edge of space and time. The object is roughly 13 billion light years away, but scientists were able to detect it because it is so “radio-loud,” meaning it is incredibly luminous even from afar.https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dmj4x/an-ancient-black-hole-as-heavy-as-a-billion-suns-is-pointed-right-at-us
3/19/2020 2:00 PMThe Earth, solar system, the entire Milky Way and the few thousand galaxies closest to us move in a vast “bubble” that is 250 million light years in diameter, where the average density of matter is half as high as for the rest of the universe. This is the hypothesis advanced by a theoretical physicist from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) to solve a conundrum that has been splitting the scientific community for a decade: At what speed is the universe expanding?https://phys.org/news/2020-03-mystery-expansion-universe.html
3/19/2020 4:00 PMA pair of 99-million-year-old cockroaches are rewriting the early history of the underworld.https://www.livescience.com/oldest-cave-dwelling-animal-cockroaches.html
3/19/2020 6:00 PMAn atomically thin materials platform developed by Penn State researchers in conjunction with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and Oak Ridge National Lab will open a wide range of new applications in biomolecular sensing, quantum phenomena, catalysis and nonlinear optics.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-two-dimensional-metals-pathways-science.html
3/20/2020 8:00 AMWhat do you get when you place a thin film of perovskite material used in solar cells on top of a magnetic substrate? More efficient hard drive technology. EPFL physicist László Forró and his team pave the way for the future of data storage.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-light-operated-hard-tomorrow.html
3/20/2020 10:00 AMScientists at The University of New Mexico have found that the Earth and Moon have distinct oxygen compositions and are not identical in oxygen as previously thought according to a new study.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-earth-moon-identical-oxygen-twins.html
3/20/2020 12:00 PMSet against a piece of black construction paper, the wings of the male cattleheart butterfly look even blacker than black.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-ultra-black-materials-wont-butterfly.html
3/20/2020 2:00 PMAn international research team led by members of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute; AEI) has obtained new measurements of how big neutron stars are. To do so, they combined a general first-principles description of the unknown behavior of neutron star matter with multi-messenger observations of the binary neutron star merger GW170817.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-neutron-star-kilometers-radius.html
3/20/2020 4:00 PMNOAA and NASA have finalized an agreement to fly a reentry technology demonstrator as the sole secondary payload on a weather satellite launch in 2022.https://spacenews.com/noaa-finalizes-secondary-payload-for-jpss-2-launch/
3/20/2020 6:00 PMResearchers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have observed an extreme planet where they suspect it rains iron. The ultra-hot giant exoplanet has a day side where temperatures climb above 2400 degrees Celsius, high enough to vaporise metals. Strong winds carry iron vapour to the cooler night side where it condenses into iron droplets.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-large-telescope-exoplanet-iron.html
3/21/2020 8:00 AMhttp://tetzoo.com/blog/2020/3/10/hummingbird-sized-archaic-birds-of-cretaceous
3/21/2020 10:00 AMMost of the space in the Milky Way Galaxy can be pretty lonely — a dull, dark void. But our own neighborhood stands out as among the more intriguing places in the universe. Recently, with new telescopic technologies, astronomers have made big strides toward finding all our stellar neighbors. Knowing the stellar cast, they can then project this information into the galaxy at large to help us learn how stars, and even planets, are born and live out their lives. As a result of these studies, astronomers are now learning how our own Sun fits into the overall picture.https://astronomy.com/magazine/2019/10/meet–the-stars-next-door
3/21/2020 12:00 PMA happy accident in the laboratory has led to a breakthrough discovery that not only solved a problem that stood for more than half a century, but has major implications for the development of quantum computers and sensors.In a study published today in Nature, a team of engineers at UNSW Sydney has done what a celebrated scientist first suggested in 1961 was possible, but has eluded everyone since: controlling the nucleus of a single atom using only electric fields.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-year-old-puzzle-quantum-breakthrough.html
3/21/2020 2:00 PMBaboon mothers living in the wild carry dead infants for up to ten days, according to a new study led by UCL and Université de Montpellier. 🙁https://phys.org/news/2020-03-baboon-mothers-dead-infant-days.html
3/21/2020 4:00 PMSynthetic chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyls, or PFAS, contain bonds between carbon and fluorine atoms considered the strongest in organic chemistry. Unfortunately, the widespread use of these nonbiodegradable products since the 1940s has contaminated many water supplies across America.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-chemicals.html
3/21/2020 6:00 PMThe discovery of a small, bird-like skull, described in an article published in Nature, reveals a new species, Oculudentavis khaungraae, that could represent the smallest known Mesozoic dinosaur in the fossil record.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-discovery-smallest-mesozoic-dinosaur-reveals.html
3/22/2020 8:00 AMWildlife officials announced in a statement Tuesday that a female and her seven-month-old were found “in a skeletal state after being killed by armed poachers” in a nature conservancy in Ijara, northeastern Kenya, likely four months ago. A third white giraffe, the young male offspring of the dead female, is believed still to be alive.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/03/rare-white-giraffes-poached/
3/22/2020 10:00 AMUsing data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES), researchers have found more than 300 trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), minor planets located in the far reaches of the solar system, including more than 100 new discoveries.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-minor-planets-neptune.html
3/22/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.fastcompany.com/90473758/what-would-happen-if-the-world-reacted-to-climate-change-like-its-reacting-to-the-coronavirus
3/22/2020 2:00 PMPermanent magnets akin to those used on refrigerators could speed the development of fusion energy—the same energy produced by the sun and stars.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-permanent-magnets-stronger-refrigerator-solution.html
3/22/2020 4:00 PMGreenland and Antarctica are shedding six times more ice than during the 1990s, driving sea level rise that could see annual flooding by 2100 in regions home today to some 400 million people, scientists have warned.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-six-fold-polar-ice-loss-global.html
3/22/2020 6:00 PMNew research lends credence to an unorthodox retelling of the story of early Earth that was first proposed by a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-earth-mantle-core-planet-early.html
3/23/2020 8:00 AMIn the kelp forests of Tierra del Fuego, at the southernmost tip of South America, the relative abundance of kelp, sea urchins, and sea stars has not changed significantly since 1973.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-remote-south-american-kelp-forests.html
3/23/2020 10:00 AMUsing a single lens that is about one-thousandth of an inch thick, researchers have created a camera that does not require focusing. The technology offers considerable benefits over traditional cameras such as the ones in most smartphones, which require multiple lenses to form high-quality, in-focus images.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-focus-free-camera-flat-lens.html
3/23/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=221116345942021
3/23/2020 2:00 PMTwo European Southern Observatory (ESO) telescopes will be “moderately affected” in their observations by the rise of big, new satellite constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Project Kuiper, a new study finds, while wide-field telescopes will be “severely affected.”https://www.space.com/satellite-megaconstellations-effect-astronomy.html
3/23/2020 4:00 PMIf NASA astronauts land on the moon as planned in 2024, they’ll have an advantage their Apollo predecessors lacked: insights gathered by tiny robotic spacecraft that visit the moon before them.https://www.space.com/nasa-artemis-moon-cubesats-science-for-astronauts.html
3/23/2020 6:00 PMA sperm enters an egg, an embryo develops and eventually a baby is born. But back up a second—how does the mother’s half-genome actually merge with the father’s half-genome to form one new human genome? Turns out researchers don’t really know that much about these relatively brief, yet crucial, incipient moments in fertilization.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-sperm-dad-genome-merge-mom.html
3/24/2020 8:00 AMScientists have long known that light can behave as both a particle and a wave—Einstein first predicted it in 1909. But no experiment has been able to show light in both states simultaneously. Now, researchers at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland have taken the first ever photograph of light as both a wave and a particle.https://www.popsci.com/light-photographed-wave-and-particle-first-time/
3/24/2020 10:00 AMThe flu season is at its height in the Northern Hemisphere, but—as many are discovering—seasonal flu vaccines don’t always provide complete protection, because unexpected flu strains show up unannounced. Now, researchers report they’ve developed an experimental oral medicine that protects mice from a wide range of influenza viruses. If it works in humans, it could lead to a new pill to fight one of the deadliest infections humanity faces.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/03/new-pill-shows-early-promise-blocking-many-strains-flu
3/24/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=567308004136516
3/24/2020 2:00 PMGenetically modified (GM) Bt cotton produces its own insecticide. The seeds were introduced in India in 2002 and today account for 90% of all cotton planting in the country. Bt cotton is now the most widely planted GM crop on small farms in the developing world.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-long-term-analysis-gm-cotton-insects.html
3/24/2020 4:00 PMIt is already hard to believe that there is ice on Mercury, where daytime temperatures reach 400 degrees Celsius, or 750 degrees Fahrenheit. Now an upcoming study says that the Vulcan heat on the planet closest to the sun likely helps make some of that ice.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-mercury-ice.html
3/24/2020 6:00 PMhttps://immunology.sciencemag.org/content/5/44/eaay6017
3/25/2020 8:00 AMNeanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis) fossils were first discovered in western Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. That was just the first in a long line of surprises thrown up by our closest evolutionary cousins.https://www.inverse.com/science/stone-tools-reveal-epic-trek-of-nomadic-neanderthals
3/25/2020 10:00 AMResearchers from Edinburgh university have discovered a new dinosaur “stomping ground” on Skye. They have found dozens of fossil footprints which expand the list of dinosaurs known to have lived in the area.https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-51834501
3/25/2020 12:00 PMThe red supergiant star Betelgeuse is nearing the end of its life, and researchers are preparing for what it will look like when the star dies in a fiery explosion called a supernova.Located in the constellation Orion, the star is about 1,000 times the size of the sun. Betelgeuse’s brightness has been dipping to the lowest point in the past 100 years, and some scientists have suggested that the star is getting close to running out of fuel and going supernova.https://www.space.com/what-betelgeuse-star-supernova-explosion-will-look-like.html
3/25/2020 2:00 PMA unique rock carving found in the Teymareh rock art site (Khomein county) in Central Iran with six limbs has been described as part man, part mantis. Rock carvings, or petroglyphs, of invertebrate animals are rare, so entomologists teamed up with archaeologists to try and identify the motif. They compared the carving with others around the world and with the local six-legged creatures which its prehistoric artists could have encountered.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-ancient-mantis-man-petroglyph-iran.html
3/25/2020 4:00 PMResearchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have created a new, rubber-like material with a unique set of properties that could act as a replacement for human tissue in medical procedures. The material has the potential to make a big difference to many people’s lives. The research was recently published in the highly regarded scientific journal ACS Nano.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-nanostructured-rubber-like-material-optimal-properties.html
3/25/2020 6:00 PMThe Falkland Islands are at risk from tsunamis caused by underwater landslides, according to new research. Scientists from Heriot-Watt University and the British Geological Survey found evidence of prehistoric submarine landslides in the Falkland Trough.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-deep-ocean-conveyor-belt-current-tsunami.html
3/26/2020 8:00 AMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10157259401258951
3/26/2020 10:00 AMA good indicator of dysregulation in live cells is a change in their RNA expression. MicroRNA (miRNA), a special type of RNA, is considered a biomarker for carcinogenic cells. A team of scientists from China has found a way to amplify miRNA in live tumor cells for bioimaging. As they report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, their assay is based on a robust cellular autocatalytic biocircuit triggered by synthetic DNA and nanoparticles.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-amplification-imaging-microrna-biomarker-tumor.html
3/26/2020 12:00 PMResearch on the lamprey brain has enabled researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden to push the birth of the cortex back in time by some 300 million years to over 500 million years ago, providing new insights into brain evolution. Their study is published in the scientific journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-reveals-early-evolution-cortex.html
3/26/2020 2:00 PMA team of researchers from the Center for Soft and Living Matter, within the Institute of Basic Science (IBS, South Korea) and affiliated with Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has discovered a novel approach to selectively target and kill several types of cancer cells.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-cancer-cells-cluttering-disposal.html
3/26/2020 4:00 PMThe concept of nuclear winter—a years-long planetary freeze brought on by airborne soot generated by nuclear bombs—has been around for decades. But such speculations have been based largely on back-of-the-envelope calculations involving a total war between Russia and the United States. Now, a new multinational study incorporating the latest models of global climate, crop production and trade examines the possible effects of a less gargantuan but perhaps more likely exchange between two longtime nuclear-armed enemies: India and Pakistan. It suggests that even a limited war between the two would cause unprecedented planet-wide food shortages and probable starvation lasting more than a decadehttps://phys.org/news/2020-03-regional-nuclear-war-global-food.html
3/26/2020 6:00 PMRutgers researchers have discovered the origins of the protein structures responsible for metabolism: simple molecules that powered early life on Earth and serve as chemical signals that NASA could use to search for life on other planets.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-scientists-blocks-life.html
3/27/2020 8:00 AMMales that face tougher competition for females risk having offspring with a greater number of harmful mutations in their genome than males without rivals. Researchers at Uppsala University have discovered this correlation in the beetle species Callosobruchus maculatus.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-rivals-offspring-greater-mutations.html
3/27/2020 10:00 AMAstronomers from Australia and Canada have performed a study of an accretion-powered millisecond pulsar known as SAX J1808.4–3658. The new research, provides essential information regarding binary evolution pathway of this system.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-binary-evolution-millisecond-pulsar-sax.html
3/27/2020 12:00 PMScientists can now edit multiple sites in the genome at the same time to learn how different DNA stretches co-operate in health and disease.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-scientists-multiple-genome-fragments.html
3/27/2020 2:00 PMCRISPR-based genetic screens have helped scientists identify genes that are key players in sickle-cell anemia, cancer immunotherapy, lung cancer metastasis, and many other diseases. However, these genetic screens are limited in scope: They can only edit or target DNA. For many regions of the human genome, targeting DNA may not be effective, and other organisms, such as RNA viruses like coronavirus or flu, cannot be targeted at all with existing DNA-targeting CRISPR screens.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-kind-crispr-technology-rna-viruses.html
3/27/2020 4:00 PMHundreds of years ago explorers sailed across oceans and traversed uncharted continents to map Earth, and in the past half a century space probes have photographed most of our solar system. Yet as well as we have come to know our astronomical backyard, our image of the larger neighborhood—our Milky Way galaxy—is blurry. The reason is obvious: we cannot get outside it to take a peek.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-map-of-the-milky-way/
3/27/2020 6:00 PMCarbon, the building block of life, is thought to have formed mainly inside the cores of stars. But a new experiment is testing another idea: some of it may have been forged during supernova blasts or the collisions of neutron stars.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carbon-conundrum-experiment-aims-to-re-create-synthesis-of-key-element/
3/28/2020 8:00 AMProteins are the building blocks of life, and consequently, scientists have long studied how they can improve proteins and design completely new proteins that perform new functions and processes.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-proteins-artificial-intelligence.html
3/28/2020 10:00 AMMysterious bone circles made from the remains of dozens of mammoths have revealed clues about how ancient communities survived Europe’s ice age.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-mysterious-bone-circles-mammoths-reveal.html
3/28/2020 12:00 PMOur understanding of the earliest stages of crown bird evolution is hindered by an exceedingly sparse avian fossil record from the Mesozoic era. The most ancient phylogenetic divergences among crown birds are known to have occurred in the Cretaceous period, but stem-lineage representatives of the deepest subclades of crown birds—Palaeognathae (ostriches and kin), Galloanserae (landfowl and waterfowl) and Neoaves (all other extant birds)—are unknown from the Mesozoic era. As a result, key questions related to the ecology, biogeography and divergence times of ancestral crown birds remain unanswered.https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2096-0
3/28/2020 2:00 PMThe oldest fossil of a modern bird yet found, dating from the age of dinosaurs, has been identified by an international team of palaeontologists.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-wonderchicken-fossil-age-dinosaurs-reveals.html
3/28/2020 4:00 PMIn many parts of the world, there is an imbalance in the food chain. Without top predators such as wolves and grizzly bears, smaller meat-eating animals like coyotes and foxes or grazers such as deer and elk can balloon in population, unchecked. This can initiate more deer-vehicle collisions, scavenging by urban coyotes and other unnatural human-animal interactions.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-fatal-small-carnivores-drawn-sites.html
3/28/2020 6:00 PMAs part of the Artemis lunar exploration program, NASA plans to return astronauts to the Moon and use that experience to inform future human exploration of Mars. To safely and comfortably explore for days at a time on the surface of these celestial bodies, astronauts need suitable equipment and places to live. Almost 20 years of human habitation aboard the International Space Station and a growing body of research conducted there are contributing important insights into how to meet these needs for future lunar explorers.https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/space-station-research-helping-nasa-plans-to-explore-moon-and-beyond-mars
3/29/2020 8:00 AMBrownian motion describes the random movement of particles in fluids, however, this revolutionary model only works when a fluid is static, or at equilibrium.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-mathematicians-theory-real-world-randomness.html
3/29/2020 10:00 AMAn ancient Elpistostege fish fossil found in Miguasha, Canada has revealed new insights into how the human hand evolved from fish fins.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-ancient-fish-fossil-reveals-evolutionary.html
3/29/2020 12:00 PMRadiocarbon dating, invented in the late 1940s and improved ever since to provide more precise measurements, is the standard method for determining the dates of artifacts in archaeology and other disciplines.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-fine-tuning-radiocarbon-dating-rewrite-ancient.html
3/29/2020 2:00 PMA team of NUS researchers has achieved a major technological breakthrough by converting waste rubber tires into super-light aerogels that have a wide range of applications. This is the first time that aerogels are made from waste rubber tires. The new rubber aerogels demonstrate remarkable properties—they are extremely light, highly absorbent, very durable, and they are also very efficient at trapping heat and sound.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-world-aerogels-scrap.html
3/29/2020 4:00 PMA diverse range of organisms use some form of communication with respect to food. The general idea in several species is that if you make food signalling calls to others when a food source is found, similar generosity should find its way back to you when someone else is the food-finder.https://carinbondar.com/2020/03/18/altruistic-food-signalling-among-chickadees/
3/29/2020 6:00 PMThe COVID-19 pandemic has forced a global network of telescopes to cancel its annual observations of black holes, which last spring published the first ever image of such an object.https://www.space.com/coronavirus-cancels-black-hole-event-horizon-telescope-observations.html
3/30/2020 8:00 AMLast April, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) sparked international excitement when it unveiled the first image of a black hole. Today, a team of researchers have published new calculations that predict a striking and intricate substructure within black hole images from extreme gravitational light bending.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-team-path-razor-sharp-black-hole.html
3/30/2020 10:00 AMThe 1918 influenza pandemic was just long enough ago that it has slipped out of the collective consciousness. But as the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, spreads, more and more experts are turning to last century’s flu for clues on how to deal with a public health crisis of such massive proportions.https://www.popsci.com/story/health/coronavirus-1918-flu-pandemic/
3/30/2020 12:00 PMFaint rings of light surrounding enormous black holes could be spotted with the help of a future generation of telescopes in space.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-telescopes-could-help-spot-photon-ring-black-hole-ever-imaged
3/30/2020 2:00 PMA successful firing test shows that Europe’s lightweight Vega launcher is well on its way to cheaper and more efficient launches in 2025, officials say.https://www.space.com/vega-rocket-3d-printed-thrust-chamber-test-video.html
3/30/2020 4:00 PMRestoring and protecting the world’s soil could absorb more than five billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year—roughly what the US emits annually—new research showed.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-soil-absorb-billions-tonnes-carbon.html
3/30/2020 6:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/NASA/posts/10158017764841772:0
3/31/2020 8:00 AMThe next time you eat sashimi, nigiri or other forms of raw fish, consider doing a quick check for worms. A new study led by the University of Washington finds dramatic increases in the abundance of a worm that can be transmitted to humans who eat raw or undercooked seafood. Its 283-fold increase in abundance since the 1970s could have implications for the health of humans and marine mammals, which both can inadvertently eat the worm.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-sushi-parasites-fold-years.html
3/31/2020 10:00 AMNot one, but TWO new species of the rarely seen six-gilled sawsharks have been found in the West Indian Ocean by an international team of marine scientists.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-brand-sharks-doo.html
3/31/2020 12:00 PMCould Mercury’s close orbit around the sun help the planet generate ice? It sounds like a paradox, but new analysis of the planet’s surface chemistry suggests that heat-generated ice may indeed be the case.https://www.space.com/mercury-scorching-heat-leads-to-ice.html
3/31/2020 2:00 PMScientists have proved one of Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution for the first time—nearly 140 years after his death.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-darwin-evolution-theories-cambridge.html
3/31/2020 4:00 PMA quantum sensor could give Soldiers a way to detect communication signals over the entire radio frequency spectrum, from 0 to 100 GHz, said researchers from the Army.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-scientists-quantum-sensor-entire-radio.html
3/31/2020 6:00 PMNASA is asking the public to help them explore “hell,” as the agency terms it — the roasting surface of the planet Venus.https://www.space.com/nasa-venus-rover-challenge-aree.html
4/1/2020 8:00 AMThere are times when everything happening in the world seems like too much — and there’s no question that recent events have contributed a lot to that feeling. But after three years of work, independent developer Ouroboro Soft is releasing a VR app that puts everything in perspective, enabling viewers to view the universe at cosmic scale, then drill down to the sub-atomic level to look at the building blocks of human life.https://venturebeat.com/2020/03/16/orders-of-magnitude-vr-reveals-humanitys-tiny-scale-in-the-universe/
4/1/2020 10:00 AMT10
4/1/2020 12:00 PMA cannonball that a Japanese spacecraft fired at an asteroid is shedding light on the most common type of asteroid in the solar system, a new study reports.https://www.space.com/asteroid-ryugu-young-japan-hayabusa2-reveals.html
4/1/2020 2:00 PMThe American Dust Bowl of the 1930s—captured by the novels of John Steinbeck—was an environmental and socio-economic disaster that worsened the Great Depression.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-impact-bowl-felt-worldwide.html
4/1/2020 4:00 PMSifting through diamond exploration samples from Baffin Island, Canadian scientists have identified a new remnant of the North Atlantic craton—an ancient part of Earth’s continental crust.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-geologists-lost-fragment-ancient-continent.html
4/1/2020 6:00 PMAfter nearly two decades, the Sun has set for NASA’s SOlar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE), a mission that continued and advanced the agency’s 40-year record of measuring solar irradiance and studying its influence on Earth’s climate.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-solar-energy-tracker-powers-years.html
4/2/2020 8:00 AMOne of the biggest ideas in physics is the possibility that all known forces, particles, and interactions can be connected in one framework. String theory is arguably the best-known proposal for a “theory of everything” that would tie together our understanding of the physical universe.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-chandra-theory.html
4/2/2020 10:00 AMT10
4/2/2020 12:00 PMA team of DESY scientists has built a miniature double particle accelerator that can recycle some of the laser energy fed into the system to boost the energy of the accelerated electrons a second time. The device uses narrowband terahertz radiation which lies between infrared and radio frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum, and a single accelerating tube is just 1.5 centimetres long and 0.79 millimetres in diameter.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-tiny-recycles-energy.html
4/2/2020 2:00 PMhttps://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/19/science.abb3405
4/2/2020 4:00 PMNASA’s Curiosity Mars rover recently set a record for the steepest terrain it’s ever climbed, cresting the “Greenheugh Pediment,” a broad sheet of rock that sits atop a hill. And before doing that, the rover took a selfie, capturing the scene just below Greenheugh.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-curiosity-mars-rover-selfie-climb.html
4/2/2020 6:00 PMUnderstanding the origin of life is arguably one of the most compelling quests for humanity. This quest has inevitably moved beyond the puzzle of life on Earth to whether there’s life elsewhere in the universe. Is life on Earth a fluke? Or is life as natural as the universal laws of physics?https://www.livescience.com/60250-did-life-emerge-from-physical-laws.html
4/3/2020 8:00 AMThe world’s animal distribution map will need to be redrawn and textbooks updated, after researchers discovered the existence of “Australian’ species on Christmas Island.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-christmas-island-discovery-redraws-life.html
4/3/2020 10:00 AMT10
4/3/2020 12:00 PMBetelgeuse is about 500 light-years away, not near enough to cause serious damage. We might see a little bit of damage to the ozone layer, or some small increase of radiation on the ground on Earth, but these would be too small to matter.https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2019/06/what-effects-will-occur-on-earth-and-in-our-solar-system-when-the-nearby-star-betelgeuse-becomes-a-supernova
4/3/2020 2:00 PMA comet called Atlas is currently heading toward the sun, and it just might put on a really good show in a couple of months. Discovered last December by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert system in Hawaii (thus the name ATLAS for the comet), the comet has been growing much brighter than experts had predicted. If it manages to hold its shape as it moves nearer to the sun, it could grow brighter than Venus.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-comet-atlas.html
4/3/2020 4:00 PMA team led by UC Riverside geologists has discovered the first ancestor on the family tree that contains most familiar animals today, including humans.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-ancestor-animals-australian-fossils.html
4/3/2020 6:00 PMWhen an egg cell of almost any sexually reproducing species is fertilized, it sets off a series of waves that ripple across the egg’s surface. These waves are produced by billions of activated proteins that surge through the egg’s membrane like streams of tiny burrowing sentinels, signaling the egg to start dividing, folding, and dividing again, to form the first cellular seeds of an organism.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-growth-pattern.html
4/4/2020 8:00 AMChiral superconductors are unconventional superconducting materials with distinctive topological properties, in which time-reversal symmetry is broken. Two of the first materials to be identified as chiral superconductors are UPt3 and Sr2RuO4. So far, experimental evidence for broken time-reversal symmetry in both these materials was based primarily on surface measurements collected at a magnetic field equal to zero.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-evidence-broken-time-reversal-symmetry-topological.html
4/4/2020 10:00 AMT10
4/4/2020 12:00 PMIt’s tough being in a new environment, even for comets. According to recent observations, interstellar Comet Borisov may be having outbursts triggered by flying through our solar system and past our sun.https://www.space.com/interstellar-comet-borisov-outbursts.html
4/4/2020 2:00 PMOur galaxy is a whole lot bigger than it looks. New work finds that the Milky Way stretches nearly 2 million light-years across, more than 15 times wider than its luminous spiral disk. The number could lead to a better estimate of how massive the galaxy is and how many other galaxies orbit it.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/astronomers-have-found-edge-milky-way-size
4/4/2020 4:00 PMIf three or more objects move around each other, history cannot be reversed. That is the conclusion of an international team of researchers based on computer simulations of three black holes orbiting each other.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-symmetry-laws-physics.html
4/4/2020 6:00 PMScientists have made a breakthrough in the development of a new generation of electronics that will require less power and generate less heat.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-key-energy-efficient-electronics.html
4/5/2020 8:00 AMWhen cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar was shot dead in 1993, the four hippos he brought to his private zoo in Colombia were left behind in a pond on his ranch. Since then, their numbers have grown to an estimated 80-100, and the giant herbivores have made their way into the country’s rivers. Scientists and the public alike have viewed Escobar’s hippos as invasive pests that by no rights should run wild on the South American continent.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-species.html
4/5/2020 10:00 AMT10
4/5/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/photographer-captures-stunning-underside-flipped-iceberg-180953951/
4/5/2020 2:00 PMRevealing yet another super-power in the skillful squid, scientists have discovered that squid massively edit their own genetic instructions not only within the nucleus of their neurons, but also within the axon—the long, slender neural projections that transmit electrical impulses to other neurons. This is the first time that edits to genetic information have been observed outside of the nucleus of an animal cell.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-genetic-powers-squid.html
4/5/2020 4:00 PMAlmost 35 years ago, scientists made the then-radical proposal that colossal hydrogen bombs called novae go through a very long-term life cycle after erupting, fading to obscurity for hundreds of thousands of years and then building back up to become full-fledged novae once more. A new study is the first to fully model the work and incorporate all of the feedback factors now known to control these systems, backing up the original prediction while bringing new details to light.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-contested-year-old-novae-iceberg.html
4/5/2020 6:00 PMVenezuela’s first and only state-owned communications satellite has been out of service since March 13 when a series of maneuvers left it tumbling in an unusable orbit.https://spacenews.com/venezuelas-flagship-communications-satellite-out-of-service-and-tumbling/
4/6/2020 8:00 AMCalifornia didn’t get much of a break. Just three years after the 2011–2017 drought, one of the severest in recorded history for the state, the driest February in 150 years has spurred discussion of whether we’re in another drought—or if the last one even ended.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-climate-messes-temperature-precipitation-california.html
4/6/2020 10:00 AMT10
4/6/2020 12:00 PMThe first manned spacecraft of the Boeing company, called Starliner, will be launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on 31 August.https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Boeings_first_manned_Starliner_to_be_launched_to_ISS_on_31_August_999.html
4/6/2020 2:00 PMIowa State University’s Alexander Stoytchev says it’s one of the “most popular and useful” algorithms around—even though most of us have never heard of it. But, if you’ve used a cell phone, browsed the internet or needed a medical image, you’ve benefitted from the fast Fourier transform (FFT).https://techxplore.com/news/2020-03-year-old-puzzle.html
4/6/2020 4:00 PMAstronomers are on the hunt for the remnants of the neutron-star collision that gave Earth its precious metals.https://www.space.com/neutron-star-crash-age-formed-solar-system.html
4/6/2020 6:00 PMThis carved ornament was fixed on a hunting tool more than 14,000 years ago, but the illusion remains. Concentrate on the higher eye-​­shaped notch on the left side, and a tusk curves below it, revealing a mammoth. Stare at the one lower down, and that pointed tooth becomes a bison’s horn as the beast bows its head. You might recall a similar 19th-­century illustration: It’s a duck until the bird’s bill morphs into a pair of rabbit’s ears.https://www.popsci.com/story/science/oldest-optical-illusion/
4/7/2020 8:00 AMhttps://www2.acom.ucar.edu/news/covid-19-impact-asian-emissions-insight-space-observations
4/7/2020 10:00 AMT10
4/7/2020 12:00 PMCardiac research and 3D bioprinting aboard the International Space Station today are helping NASA improve health for humans in space and on Earth. The three Expedition 62 crewmembers also participated in eye exams and radiation checks.https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2020/03/26/heart-eye-studies-in-space-as-next-crew-nears-launch/
4/7/2020 2:00 PMResearchers have gotten pretty good at growing human tissues from stem cells—from heart cells in a Petri dish to 3-D printing full ears. But assembling the complex vascularity of heart tissue is no small feat. Even the most sophisticated 3-D printers can’t fabricate the structure. However, researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute might have a solution: use spinach leaves as the backbone for the heart tissue.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researcher-turn-spinach-leaves-potential-heart-patches-180962678/
4/7/2020 4:00 PMOnly one spacecraft has flown near Uranus and Neptune, the mysterious ice giant planets on the edge of our solar system. Yet the wealth of data captured by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft some 34 years ago is still revealing tantalizing hints and reminding scientists of why we need to go back.https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/27/world/uranus-plasmoid-voyager-2-scn/index.html
4/7/2020 6:00 PMPlanetary defense researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) continue to validate their ability to accurately simulate how they might deflect an Earth-bound asteroid in a study that will be published in the April issue of the American Geophysical Union journal Earth and Space Science.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-planetary-defenders-validate-asteroid-deflection.html
4/8/2020 8:00 AMA small, inexpensive and highly accurate gyroscope, developed at the University of Michigan, could help drones and autonomous cars stay on track without a GPS signal.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-03-small-precise-gyroscope-gps.html
4/8/2020 10:00 AMT10
4/8/2020 12:00 PMhe universe really likes its information. It doesn’t like to create new information, and it doesn’t like to destroy any of its existing information. In fact, “like” is far too weak of a word. As far as we can tell (and we’ve worked really, really hard to check), information is neither created nor destroyed: information throughout the universe simply persists.https://www.space.com/black-hole-information-paradox-mystery.html
4/8/2020 2:00 PMEight and a half years into its grand tour of the solar system, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft was ready for another encounter. It was Jan. 24, 1986, and soon it would meet the mysterious seventh planet, icy-cold Uranus.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-revisiting-decades-old-voyager-scientists-secret.html
4/8/2020 4:00 PMThe mass extinction at the end of the Permian Period 252 million years ago—one of the great turnovers of life on Earth—appears to have played out differently and at different times on land and in the sea, according to newly redated fossils beds from South Africa and Australia.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-earth-largest-extinction-die-offs-began.html
4/8/2020 6:00 PMA suspected subsurface ocean on Pluto might be old and deep. New analyses of images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft suggest that the dwarf planet has had an underground ocean since shortly after Pluto formed 4.5 billion years ago, and that the ocean may surround and interact with the rocky core.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/pluto-subsurface-ocean-may-be-old-deep-nasa-new-horizons
4/9/2020 8:00 AMTerahertz (THz) waves fall between microwave and infrared radiation in the electromagnetic spectrum, oscillating at frequencies of between 100 billion and 30 trillion cycles per second. These waves are prized for their distinctive properties: they can penetrate paper, clothing, wood and walls, as well as detect air pollution. THz sources could revolutionize security and medical imaging systems. What’s more, their ability to carry vast quantities of data could hold the key to faster wireless communications.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-nanoscale-device-high-power-terahertz.html
4/9/2020 10:00 AMT10
4/9/2020 12:00 PMTransfer of mitochondria between cells is a ubiquitously occurring and now universally known phenomenon. For years, researchers have been serially demonstrating that one particular new cell type can transfer its mitos to yet another particular cell type to achieve some specific metabolic goal essential to survival of the meta-host organism. But what happens when the mitochondria come from the outside world, from other members of your own species, or from a different species altogether? In addressing this very real situation, we first must look at the particulars of how and why mitos are transmitted across cell boundaries in the first place.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-free-range-mitochondria.html
4/9/2020 2:00 PMRead any astronomical article, and you’ll likely run into a measurement in terms of light-years, solar masses, astronomical units, or arcminutes. These units are unique to astronomy, and all can be expressed in terms of other, more fundamental units, such as meters, grams, and degrees. One physicist is proposing we do away with such units.https://astronomy.com/news/2018/04/is-it-time-for-a-new-astronomical-yardstick
4/9/2020 4:00 PMLast April, Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft created an artificial crater on the asteroid, Ryugu, by hurling a four-pound copper ball, called SCI, toward the asteroid’s surface at about 4,500 miles per hour in order to calculate Ryugu’s age. Now, results from the out-of-this-world experiment are in.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/results-are-explosive-asteroid-experiment-180974529/
4/9/2020 6:00 PMWhen descendants of ancient fish first hauled themselves onto dry land, they didn’t do so with lungs evolved specifically for that reason. The need to breathe air ultimately led to a change in the function of an organ the fish already had. Likewise, when birds took to the air millions of years later, they did so using feathers that may have originally evolved as insulation or as a way to attract mates.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-book-captures-how-genetics-fills-story-life-evolution
4/10/2020 8:00 AMOver 80,000 years ago, Neanderthals were already feeding themselves regularly on mussels, fish and other marine life. The first robust evidence of this has been found by an international research team with the participation of the University of Göttingen during an excavation in the cave of Figueira Brava in Portugal.https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-03/uog-nam032520.php
4/10/2020 10:00 AMT10
4/10/2020 12:00 PMStratolaunch, the company founded by the late billionaire Paul Allen as an air-launch company, announced March 30 it is developing a reusable hypersonic vehicle designed to be launched from the company’s giant aircraft.https://spacenews.com/stratolaunch-announces-hypersonic-vehicle-plans/
4/10/2020 2:00 PMScientists have discovered something strange lurking in a 34-year-old batch of data from the Voyager 2 mission: a plasmoid. Plasmoids are globs of ionized gases pulled from a celestial body’s atmosphere. These bursts of atmospheric material are flung away from a planet by its magnetic field. This is the first time a plasmoid has been recorded at Uranus, though, and the discovery has revealed a lot about the mysterious planet.https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/solar-system/a31958857/uranus-is-leaking-gas/
4/10/2020 4:00 PMAstronomers have gleaned their first insight to what the jets blasting off of supermassive black holes may have done to surrounding gas in the young universe.https://www.space.com/ancient-supermassive-black-hole-jets-effects.html
4/10/2020 6:00 PMThe agave plant used to make tequila could be established in semi-arid Australia as an environmentally friendly solution to Australia’s transport fuel shortage, a team of researchers at the University of Sydney, University of Exeter and University of Adelaide has found.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-03-tequila-powered-biofuels-efficient-corn.html
4/11/2020 8:00 AMOur galaxy is a whole lot bigger than it looks. New work finds that the Milky Way stretches nearly 2 million light-years across, more than 15 times wider than its luminous spiral disk. The number could lead to a better estimate of how massive the galaxy is and how many other galaxies orbit it.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/astronomers-have-found-edge-milky-way-size
4/11/2020 10:00 AMhttps://totallythebomb.com/the-miami-zoo-shared-photos-of-their-new-baby-meerkats-and-it-is-cuteness-overload
4/11/2020 12:00 PMUsing the same technology that allows high-frequency signals to travel on regular phone lines, researchers tested sending extremely high-frequency, 200 GHz signals through a pair of copper wires. The result is a link that can move data at rates of terabits per second, significantly faster than currently available channels.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-extreme-high-frequency-enable-terabits-per-second-links.html
4/11/2020 2:00 PMSuspended near the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea off France and Italy, 126 football-sized glass spheres are already using the ocean itself as an instrument to search for signals from dark matter, supernovae and neutron star collisions. These are the first of many such globes deployed for a project called the Cubic Kilometer Neutrino Telescope, or KM3NeT.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/undersea-telescopes-scan-the-sky-from-below/
4/11/2020 4:00 PMAstronomers have found the best evidence for the perpetrator of a cosmic homicide: a black hole of an elusive class known as “intermediate-mass,” which betrayed its existence by tearing apart a wayward star that passed too close.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/hubble-finds-best-evidence-for-elusive-mid-sized-black-hole
4/11/2020 6:00 PMEngineers at Caltech have shown that atoms in optical cavities—tiny boxes for light—could be foundational to the creation of a quantum internet.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-tiny-optical-cavity-quantum-networks.html
4/12/2020 8:00 AMSometimes referred to as the “the Methuselah of freshwater fish,” sturgeons and their close relatives are very old from an evolutionary point of view. Fossils indicate that sturgeons date back 250 million years and have changed very little during this period, at least as far as their external appearance is concerned. So it is not surprising that Charles Darwin coined the term “living fossils” for them.https://phys.org/news/2020-03-sturgeon-genome-sequenced.html
4/12/2020 10:00 AMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1400859390103190
4/12/2020 12:00 PMResearchers have found evidence of rainforests near the South Pole 90 million years ago, suggesting the climate was exceptionally warm at the time.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-ancient-rainforest-antarctica-warmer-prehistoric.html
4/12/2020 2:00 PMWant to build the largest radio telescope to fly in space? Here’s an easier technique: Design six tiny satellites to fly in formation and work together.https://www.space.com/sunrise-cubesat-fleet-will-study-solar-outbursts.html
4/12/2020 4:00 PMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfHxUaJDEn8
4/12/2020 6:00 PMA scarlet fan spread across the skies over Japan 1,400 years ago, and it’s been puzzling astronomers ever since.https://www.space.com/japan-sky-lights-mystery-red-aurora.html
4/13/2020 8:00 AMScientists have found “dense” communities of creatures living deep beneath the sea, in a discovery that gives hope that similar life could be found on Mars. Volcanic rock more than 100 metres underneath the sea floor was discovered to be “teeming” with creatures, according to the new report.https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/mars-life-alien-creatures-discovered-beneath-sea-earth-a9441721.html
4/13/2020 10:00 AMOur solar system’s second known interstellar visitor doesn’t seem to be in one piece anymore. Photos of the interstellar Comet Borisov taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on March 28 and March 30 show an elongated nucleus that appears to have two distinct components, astronomers announced.https://www.space.com/interstellar-comet-borisov-two-pieces.html
4/13/2020 12:00 PMJust as the sun has planets and the planets have moons, our galaxy has satellite galaxies, and some of those might have smaller satellite galaxies of their own. To wit, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a relatively large satellite galaxy visible from the Southern Hemisphere, is thought to have brought at least six of its own satellite galaxies with it when it first approached the Milky Way, based on recent measurements from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-milky-satellites-reveal-link-dark.html
4/13/2020 2:00 PMFor the third time in less than five months, a prototype of SpaceX’s Starship next-generation launch vehicle was destroyed in a test at the company’s South Texas facilities April 3, although this failure may be an issue with the test itself.https://spacenews.com/third-starship-prototype-destroyed-in-tanking-test/
4/13/2020 4:00 PMScientists have discovered a silly looking creature in the Indian Ocean. The Schmidt Ocean Institute’s expedition has found a giant siphonophore which is closely related to a jellyfish. This creature could be the largest ever recorded though, with an outer “ring” that measures about 154 feet.https://www.wfla.com/hooked-on-science/scientists-discover-giant-ocean-creature-that-looks-like-silly-string/
4/13/2020 6:00 PMComputer scientists and biologists have teamed up to create a new kind of living robot. Grown from the stem cells of the frog Xenopus laevis, these so-called xenobots represent a new fusion of biological life and robotics that defies any sort of conventional definition.https://futurism.com/the-byte/living-xenobots-biological-cells
4/14/2020 8:00 AMPerseverance, the car-size robot at the heart of NASA’s life-hunting Mars 2020 mission, is scheduled to lift off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station during a three-week window that opens on the morning of July 17https://www.space.com/mars-rover-perseverance-wheels-parachutes.html
4/14/2020 10:00 AMNASA announced it has selected Masten Space Systems to fly a suite of payloads to the south pole of the moon in late 2022.https://spacenews.com/masten-wins-nasa-lunar-lander-award/
4/14/2020 12:00 PMIn a new twist on Neandertals’ Stone Age accomplishments, our close evolutionary relatives wound bark fibers into strings that could have been used to make clothes, rope, nets and other practical but perishable items, a new study suggests.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/neandertal-made-oldest-known-string
4/14/2020 2:00 PMIn four years millions of people in North America will experience the longest totality of their entire lives. Now that’s something to look forward to—and start planning. On Monday, April 8, 2024 a rare total solar eclipse lasting a maximum of 4 minutes 28 seconds will be visible from parts of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada as the moon’s central shadow sweeps across the continent in 139 magical minutes.https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2020/04/07/50-million-people-may-gather-for-the-greater-american-eclipse-the-most-watched-in-history/
4/14/2020 4:00 PMFour fossilized molar teeth excavated in Peru’s Amazon basin come from a now-extinct lineage of primates that rafted across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa and reached the inland site between around 35 million and 32 million years ago, researchers say.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/two-primate-lineages-crossed-atlantic-ocean-millions-years-ago
4/14/2020 6:00 PMNot quite planets and not quite stars, brown dwarfs are cosmic in-betweeners. Learning about their atmospheres could help us understand giant planets around other stars. For the first time, scientists have directly measured wind speed on a brown dwarf, an object larger than Jupiter (the largest planet in our solar system) but not quite massive enough to become a star. To achieve the finding, they used a new method that could also be applied to learn about the atmospheres of gas-dominated planets outside our solar system.https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7635
4/15/2020 8:00 AMA nine-year study of cougars in the Yellowstone National Park has found that nearly half of the big cats they tracked were infected with the plague-carrying bacteria Yersinia pestis at some point, according to a paper published last month in Environmental Conservation.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/yellowstone-cougars-have-plague-180974612/
4/15/2020 10:00 AMLast fall, astrobiologist Kevin Hand and I were aboard the Norwegian icebreaker Kronprins Haakon for a month, crashing through the frozen ocean off the northeast coast of Greenland. Around us, Earth looked alien—a world where the normally shifting seas were a solid mass of glowing ice.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/earths-oceans-may-hold-key-find-alien-life-Europa/
4/15/2020 12:00 PMA Mercury-bound spacecraft swooped past Earth, tweaking its roundabout path to the solar system’s smallest and innermost planet.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-mercury-bound-spacecraft-earth-pictures.html
4/15/2020 2:00 PMWith the launch period of NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover opening in 14 weeks, final preparations of the spacecraft continue at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In the past week, the assembly, test and launch operations team completed important milestones, fueling the descent stage—also known as the sky crane—and attaching the Mars Helicopter, which will be the first aircraft in history to attempt power-controlled flight on another planet.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-mars-helicopter-nasa-perseverance-rover.html
4/15/2020 4:00 PMResearchers say they’ve built a system that can translate brain signals directly into text — a promising step toward a “speech prosthesis” that could effectively allow you to think text directly into a computer.https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-system-translate-thoughts-text
4/15/2020 6:00 PMPhysicists at MIT and elsewhere have observed evidence of Majorana fermions—particles that are theorized to also be their own antiparticle—on the surface of a common metal: gold. This is the first sighting of Majorana fermions on a platform that can potentially be scaled up.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-sighting-mysterious-majorana-fermion-common.html
4/16/2020 8:00 AMThe manufacturer of Russia’s workhorse Soyuz-2 rocket said it has paused production to keep factory workers safe during the coronavirus pandemic.https://spacenews.com/russia-suspends-soyuz-rocket-production-amid-coronavirus/
4/16/2020 10:00 AMCharles Darwin once cited the evolution of parasitoid wasps as an illustration for why he couldn’t believe in the existence of God. An insect capable of injecting caterpillar bodies with eggs that would eventually pop open and allow tiny little wasp larvae to consume the host from the inside-out—a fate like this was violent enough for Darwin to conclude a benevolent higher power could not exist.https://www.popsci.com/parasitoid-wasp-giant-stinger/
4/16/2020 12:00 PMA scientist exploring deep inside a cave in France has discovered huge dinosaur footprints, measuring up to 1.25 metres long, made by some of the largest creatures ever to walk the Earth.https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00972-y
4/16/2020 2:00 PMhttps://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/04/coronavirus-pandemic-earth-pollution-noise/609316/
4/16/2020 4:00 PMResearchers at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) unveil highest-ever resolution images of the Sun from NASA’s solar sounding rocket mission.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-images-reveal-fine-threads-million-degree.html
4/16/2020 6:00 PMAstronomers have assumed for decades that the Universe is expanding at the same rate in all directions. A new study based on data from ESA’s XMM-Newton, NASA’s Chandra and the German-led ROSAT X-ray observatories suggests this key premise of cosmology might be wrong.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-basic-assumption-universe.html
4/17/2020 8:00 AMNow it’s possible to explore NASA’s flying observatory with a new 3-D virtual tour that brings users aboard SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/next-stop-the-stratosphere-via-virtual-tour
4/17/2020 10:00 AMYou may have heard that nothing escapes the gravitational grasp of a black hole, not even light. This is true in the immediate vicinity of a black hole, but a bit farther out—in disks of material that swirl around some black holes—light can escape. In fact, this is the reason actively growing black holes shine with brilliant X-rays.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-black-hole.html
4/17/2020 12:00 PMVOX Space, a subsidiary of Virgin Orbit that focuses on the national security launch market, was awarded a $35 million contract for three dedicated launches to deliver 44 small satellites to low Earth orbit, the U.S. Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center announced.https://spacenews.com/virgin-orbits-vox-space-wins-35-million-u-s-space-force-launch-contract/
4/17/2020 2:00 PMMost mammal fossils are visually unimpressive: a handful of teeth here and a fragment of bone there. Some are not even enough to identify the species they belonged to. But even a tiny fossil found in the right place can raise some really exciting questions about evolution.https://theconversation.com/monkey-teeth-fossils-hint-several-extinct-species-crossed-the-atlantic-135961
4/17/2020 4:00 PMScientists have detected what may be the largest hole in the ozone layer ever recorded over the North Pole.https://www.space.com/largest-ozone-hole-arctic-north-pole.html
4/17/2020 6:00 PMCeres, the closest dwarf planet to Earth, may be wrinkling as it shrinks.https://www.space.com/dwarf-planet-ceres-shrinking-wrinkling.html
4/18/2020 8:00 AMSome of the tiniest creatures on the planet are vital for the environment. But there is a worldwide fall in insect numbers after an accelerating rate of extinction.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-scientists-humanity-insect-extinctions.html
4/18/2020 10:00 AMResearchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill made a one-way street for electrons that may unlock the ability for devices to process ultra-high-speed wireless data and simultaneously harvest energy for power. The researchers did this by shaping silicon on a microscopic scale to create a funnel, or “ratchet,” for electrons.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-one-way-street-electrons.html
4/18/2020 12:00 PMSince its discovery in 2017, an air of mystery has surrounded the first known interstellar object to visit our solar system, an elongated, cigar-shaped body named ‘Oumuamua (Hawaiian for “a messenger from afar arriving first”).https://phys.org/news/2020-04-formation-theory-mysterious-interstellar-oumuamua.html
4/18/2020 2:00 PMA supernova at least twice as bright and energetic, and likely much more massive than any yet recorded has been identified by an international team of astronomers, led by the University of Birmingham.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-scientists-supernova-outshines.html
4/18/2020 4:00 PMBelow the ice-covered surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus hides a vast ocean. This sprawling ocean is likely 1 billion years old, which means it’s the perfect age to harbor life, said Marc Neveu, a research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.https://www.livescience.com/65855-enceladus-billion-year-old-ocean.html
4/18/2020 6:00 PMA team of scientists including researchers at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II)—a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory—have demonstrated a new technique for imaging proteins in 3-D with nanoscale resolution. Their work enables researchers to identify the precise location of proteins within individual cells, reaching the resolution of the cell membrane and the smallest subcellular organelles.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-cell-membrane-proteins-imaged-d.html
4/19/2020 8:00 AMResearchers at the University of California, Irvine and other institutions have architecturally designed plate-nanolattices—nanometer-sized carbon structures—that are stronger than diamonds as a ratio of strength to density.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-team-carbon-nanostructure-stronger-diamonds.html
4/19/2020 10:00 AMMaterials scientists at Duke University have shown the first clear example that a material’s transition into a magnet can control instabilities in its crystalline structure that cause it to change from a conductor to an insulator.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-electromagnetic-properties-enable-spintronic.html
4/19/2020 12:00 PMEarth’s molten core may be leaking iron, according to researchers who analyzed how iron behaves inside our planet.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-heavy-iron-isotopes-leaking-earth.html
4/19/2020 2:00 PMPhotosynthesis on Earth is regulated by plant phenology—how plant life cycles interact with the climate—and environmental conditions, both of which changed substantially in recent decades. Unlike early-season photosynthesis which is mostly driven by warming temperatures or the onset of the wet season, late-season photosynthesis can be limited by several factors, such as plant life cycle and radiation, and its underlying mechanisms are less understood. Late-season photosynthesis on land contributes greatly to annual total carbon fixation and is sensitive to climate. Scientists generally agree that temperature limitation on late-season photosynthesis will alleviate with warming but the effects of water availability are highly uncertain.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-precipitation-essential-counteract-global.html
4/19/2020 4:00 PMHigh vibrational states of the Magnesium dimer (Mg2) are an important system in studies of fundamental physics, although they have eluded experimental characterization for half a century. Experimental physicists have so far resolved the first 14 vibrational states of Mg2, despite reports that the ground-state may support five additional levels. In a new report, Stephen H. Yuwono and a research team in the departments of physics and chemistry at the Michigan State University, U.S., presented highly accurate initial potential energy curves for the ground and excited electron states of Mg2. They centered the experimental investigations on calculations of state-of-the-art coupled-cluster (CC) and full configuration interaction computations of the Mg2 dimer. The ground-state potential confirmed the existence of 19 vibrational states with minimal deviation between previously calculated rovibrational values and experimentally derived data.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-quantum-enigma-vibrational-states-magnesium.html
4/19/2020 6:00 PMCountries looking to contain the spread of harmful species and diseases like COVID-19 should work together in multiple hotspots, according to a new model developed by an Arizona State University researcher.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-countries-coronavirus-species.html
4/20/2020 8:00 AMOur solar system’s first known interstellar visitor may have a very violent origin story. The mysterious object ‘Oumuamua, which was spotted zooming through the inner solar system in October 2017, is probably a fragment of a larger body that was torn apart by gravitational forces during a close flyby of its native star, a new study suggests.https://www.space.com/interstellar-object-oumuamua-origins-tidal-disruption.html
4/20/2020 10:00 AMThe demands for data storage and processing have grown exponentially as the world becomes increasingly connected, emphasizing the need for new materials capable of more efficient data storage and data processing.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-discovery-avenue-next-generation-storage.html
4/20/2020 12:00 PMIn a new study, Stanford researchers have strongly bolstered the theory that a lack of oxygen in Earth’s oceans contributed to a devastating die-off approximately 444 million years ago. The new results further indicate that these anoxic (little- to no-oxygen) conditions lasted over 3 million years—significantly longer than similar biodiversity-crushing spells in our planet’s history.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-bad-alive-links-ocean-deoxygenation.html
4/20/2020 2:00 PMResearchers using the Gemini North telescope on Hawai’i’s Maunakea have detected the most energetic wind from any quasar ever measured. This outflow, which is travelling at nearly 13% of the speed of light, carries enough energy to dramatically impact star formation across an entire galaxy. The extragalactic tempest lay hidden in plain sight for 15 years before being unveiled by innovative computer modeling and new data from the international Gemini Observatory.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-cosmic-tempest-astronomers-energetic-outflow.html
4/20/2020 4:00 PMAt the regional level and worldwide, the occurrence of large shallow earthquakes appears to follow a mathematical pattern called the Devil’s Staircase, where clusters of earthquake events are separated by long but irregular intervals of seismic quiet.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-large-earthquakes-devil-staircase-pattern.html
4/20/2020 6:00 PMUsing data from the CALIFA Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS) survey and advanced modeling tools, researchers from Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA) have obtained important results about the central spherical component (the bulge) in spiral galaxies like the Milky Way, shedding new light on the understanding of galactic evolution.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-galactic-bulge-galaxy-evolution.html
4/21/2020 8:00 AMA new data-processing approach created by scientists at the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute offers a simpler, faster path to data generated by cryo-electron microscopy instruments, removing a barrier to wider adoption of this powerful technique.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-automated-pipeline-access-advanced-microscopy.html
4/21/2020 10:00 AMMolecules in tarantula venom could be used as an alternative to opioid pain killers for people seeking chronic pain relief. University of Queensland researchers have designed a novel tarantula venom mini-protein that can potentially relieve severe pain without addiction.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-spider-venom-key-pain-relief.html
4/21/2020 12:00 PMAn international team of researchers has found evidence that suggests atmospheric CO2 levels at the end of the Triassic era were nearly the same as those predicted for the 21st century. In their paper the group describes their study of basalt rocks from the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) and what they learned from them.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-volcanic-eruptions-mass-extinction-amount.html
4/21/2020 2:00 PMEggs thought to belong to the giant bird Genyornis were likely laid by a much smaller extinct bird from another branch of the family tree.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/the-mixed-up-eggs-of-australia-s-mega-birds/
4/21/2020 4:00 PMA team of retirees that scours the remote ravines and windswept plains of the Pacific Northwest for long-forgotten pioneer orchards has rediscovered 10 apple varieties that were believed to be extinct—the largest number ever unearthed in a single season by the nonprofit Lost Apple Project.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-pioneer-era-apple-thought-extinct-west.html
4/21/2020 6:00 PMSince the 2010 BP oil spill, marine scientists at the University of South Florida (USF) have sampled more than 2,500 individual fish representing 91 species from 359 locations across the Gulf of Mexico and found evidence of oil exposure in all of them, including some of the most popular types of seafood. The highest levels were detected in yellowfin tuna, golden tilefish and red drum.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-gulf-wide-survey-oil-pollution-years.html
4/22/2020 8:00 AMWhen a fire extinguisher is opened, the compressed carbon dioxide forms ice crystals around the nozzle, providing a visual example of the physics principle that gases and plasmas cool as they expand. When our sun expels plasma in the form of solar wind, the wind also cools as it expands through space—but not nearly as much as the laws of physics would predict.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-solar-hotter.html
4/22/2020 10:00 AMMIT engineers have developed a way to closely track how plants respond to stresses such as injury, infection, and light damage, using sensors made of carbon nanotubes. These sensors can be embedded in plant leaves, where they report on hydrogen peroxide signaling waves.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-carbon-nanotubes-embedded-chemical.html
4/22/2020 12:00 PMChinese space propulsion startup Space Pioneer has raised $14 million in funding for completing a series of next-generation liquid engines.https://spacenews.com/space-pioneer-raises-14-million-to-develop-green-liquid-rocket-engines/
4/22/2020 2:00 PMThe counterintuitive question on how to wrap a curved spherical surface using conventionally stiff and non-stretchable or brittle materials, forms the basis of this study. To answer the question, Yu-Ki Lee and a research team in the departments of materials engineering and computer science in the Republic of Korea and the U.S. extended a geometrical design method of computational origami to wrap spherical constructs.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-origami-universal-method-d-surfaces.html
4/22/2020 4:00 PMPhysicist and entrepreneur Stephen Wolfram has unveiled “The Wolfram Physics Project,” which he subtitles “A Project to Find the Fundamental Theory of Physics.” The aim of the project is to enlist the assistance of people around the globe to find the fundamental theory of physics—the theory that ties together all of physics, from the general theory of relativity to quantum mechanics. Wolfram has also published several documents on his website that outline the history behind the development of the project. Early in his career, he was a distinguished physicist, but later, left to found a computer company. More recently, he has found a renewed interest in pursuing his ideas about fundamental physics that he believes will lead to the discovery of a fundamental theory.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-wolfram-physics-fundamental-theory.html
4/22/2020 6:00 PMWhen the American physicist Arthur Compton discovered that light waves behave like particles in 1922, and could knock electrons out of atoms during an impact experiment, it was a milestone for quantum mechanics. Five years later, Compton received the Nobel Prize for this discovery. Compton used very shortwave light with high energy for his experiment, which enabled him to neglect the binding energy of the electron to the atomic nucleus. Compton simply assumed for his calculations that the electron rested freely in space.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-puzzle-compton-approach-theories-quantum.html
4/23/2020 8:00 AMA team of Australian scientists from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and the Australian National University (ANU) believe they have developed a way to address a decades-long challenge in the field of quantum materials—the spectral tuning of proposed quantum light sources.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-stretchable-sheets-atoms-quantum-technologies.html
4/23/2020 10:00 AMSpace rocks that fell to Earth contain ribose, an essential molecule for life’s genetic machinery, and other related sugars. The finding lends support to the idea that many of life’s ingredients were delivered to Earth by interplanetary debris.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ribose-sugar-needed-life-has-been-detected-meteorites
4/23/2020 12:00 PMResearchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have uncovered the detailed shape of a key protein involved in muscle contraction. The report may lead to improved understanding of muscle-weakening genetic conditions called congenital myasthenic syndromes (CMS).https://phys.org/news/2020-04-snake-venom-muscle-protein.html
4/23/2020 2:00 PMMost quantum computers being developed around the world will only work at fractions of a degree above absolute zero. That requires multi-million-dollar refrigeration and as soon as you plug them into conventional electronic circuits they’ll instantly overheat. But now researchers led by Professor Andrew Dzurak at UNSW Sydney have addressed this problem.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-hot-qubits-biggest-constraints-quantum.html
4/23/2020 4:00 PMMahogany is a commercially important wood, valued for its hardness and beauty. For science, mahogany is important, too—the fossil presence of the mahogany family is a telltale of where tropical forests once stood. Until recently, paleobotanists had only found evidence the mahogany family extended back to the Paleocene (about 60 million years ago).https://phys.org/news/2020-04-mahogany-tree-family-dates-hurrah.html
4/23/2020 6:00 PMSince March 2017, ESA’s NELIOTA project has been regularly looking out for ‘lunar flashes’ on the moon, to help us better understand the threat posed by small asteroid impacts. The project detects the flash of light produced when an asteroid collides energetically with the lunar surface, and recently recorded its 100th impact. But this time, it was not the only one watching.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-100th-lunar-asteroid-collision-telescope.html
4/24/2020 8:00 AMhttps://stm.sciencemag.org/content/12/539/eaaz3833
4/24/2020 10:00 AMThe T2K Collaboration has published new results showing the strongest constraint yet on the parameter that governs the breaking of the symmetry between matter and antimatter in neutrino oscillations. Using beams of muon neutrinos and muon antineutrinos, T2K has studied how these particles and antiparticles transition into electron neutrinos and electron antineutrinos, respectively.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-matter-antimatter-asymmetry-t2k-results-restrict.html
4/24/2020 12:00 PMhttps://stke.sciencemag.org/content/13/627/eaba4200
4/24/2020 2:00 PMJupiter’s fifth moon, Io, is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Plumes of sulfur spew upward as high as 190 miles (300 kilometers). The surface of Io is splotched with lava lakes and floodplains of liquid rock. (sidenote – yes, this article is from 2018. just sharing for the guy who missed it)https://www.space.com/16419-io-facts-about-jupiters-volcanic-moon.html
4/24/2020 4:00 PMYogesh Vohra, Ph.D., uses microwave-plasma chemical vapor deposition to create thin crystal films of never-before-seen materials. This effort seeks materials that approach a diamond in hardness and are able to survive extreme pressure, temperature and corrosive environments. The search for new materials is motivated by the desire to overcome limitations of diamond, which tends to oxidize at temperatures higher than 600 degrees Celsius and also chemically reacts with ferrous metals.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-boron-material-high-hardness-plasma.html
4/24/2020 6:00 PMEven if you could measure three black holes’ locations as precisely as physically possible, you still might not know where the black holes would go. Such a trio’s complex dance can be so chaotic that the motions are fundamentally unpredictable, new computer simulations show.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/quantum-mechanics-some-black-hole-orbits-impossible-predict
4/25/2020 8:00 AMMetasurfaces are artificial materials designed at the nanoscale, which can control the scattering of light with exceptionally high precision. Over the past decade or so, these materials have been used to create a variety of technological tools ranging from sensors to lenses and imaging techniques.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-quantum-metasurface-simultaneously-multiple-properties.html
4/25/2020 10:00 AMAs our body’s largest and most prominent organ, the skin also provides one of our most fundamental connections to the world around us. From the moment we’re born, it is intimately involved in every physical interaction we have.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-04-haptics-biomechanics-skin-tactile.html
4/25/2020 12:00 PMWhen species under a taxonomic umbrella have faced forks in the road, leading to extinction or adaptation, the path taken has been difficult to follow. In a newly published paper, two scientists argue that long-used approaches for reconstructing these paths are deeply flawed.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-accuracy-methods-trees-life.html
4/25/2020 2:00 PMGeoOptics developed a new data processing system to improve the accuracy of weather data from its CICERO radio occultation satellite constellation. The new system, GeoOptics Processor for Radio Occultation (GeoPRO), is designed to address an inherent challenge in employing radio occultation data. Two signals traveling through the atmosphere sometimes reach a receiver at the same time.https://spacenews.com/geooptics-introduces-geopro/
4/25/2020 4:00 PMObservations made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have revealed for the first time that a star orbiting the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way moves just as predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Its orbit is shaped like a rosette and not like an ellipse as predicted by Newton’s theory of gravity. This long-sought-after result was made possible by increasingly precise measurements over nearly 30 years, which have enabled scientists to unlock the mysteries of the behemoth lurking at the heart of our galaxy.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-eso-telescope-star-supermassive-black.html
4/25/2020 6:00 PMA key issue for scientists seeking to bring the fusion that powers the sun and stars to Earth is forecasting the performance of the volatile plasma that fuels fusion reactions. Making such predictions calls for considerable costly time on the world’s fastest supercomputers. Now researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have borrowed a technique from applied mathematics to accelerate the process.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-mathematics-capturing-fusion-energy.html
4/26/2020 8:00 AMA research team led by physicists at the University of California, Riverside, reports tiny satellite galaxies of the Milky Way can be used to test fundamental properties of “dark matter”—nonluminous material thought to constitute 85% of matter in the universe.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-satellite-galaxies-milky-dark-theory.html
4/26/2020 10:00 AMResearchers at the School of Biological Sciences and the Swire Institute of Marine Science, The University of Hong Kong have developed a new method for determining what corals eat, and demonstrated that reliance on certain nutritional sources underpins their bleaching susceptibility in warming oceans.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-secret-corals-tolerance-climate-diet.html
4/26/2020 12:00 PMMore than a quadrillion quadrillion individual viruses exist on Earth, but most are not poised to hop into humans. Can we find the ones that are?https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/factors-allow-viruses-infect-humans-coronavirus/
4/26/2020 2:00 PMAn international team of astronomers has identified a major outburst and X-ray pulsation from an X-ray binary system known as RX J0209.6−7427. The detection, detailed in a paper published April 6 on the arXiv pre-print server, could shed more light on the nature of this source.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-major-outburst-x-ray-pulsations-rx.html
4/26/2020 4:00 PMScientists took a second look at a strange object and spotted the most powerful winds ever detected gusting off of a special flavor of black hole called a quasar.https://www.space.com/most-energetic-quasar-outflow.html
4/26/2020 6:00 PMA SpaceX rocket will send two American astronauts to the International Space Station on May 27, NASA announced on Friday, the first crewed spaceflight from the US in nearly a decade.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-nasa-spacex-crewed-flight.html
4/27/2020 8:00 AMThe first commercial satellite servicing mission has been declared a success after the Intelsat 901 (IS-901) communications satellite returned to work providing internet connectivity.https://www.space.com/ailing-intelsat-satellite-revived-by-mev-1-mission-success.html
4/27/2020 10:00 AMOur Milky Way galaxy was born in violence and scientists are still piecing together a picture of the cosmic crime scene.https://www.space.com/early-milky-way-cannibalism.html
4/27/2020 12:00 PMMany of NASA’s Earth-observing satellites can see what the human eye can’t — including potentially harmful pollutants lingering in the air we breathe. From the vantage point of space, these satellites help us measure and track air pollution as it moves around the globe and have contributed significantly to our decades-long quest for cleaner air.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/how-nasa-is-helping-the-world-breathe-more-easily
4/27/2020 2:00 PMhttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exotic-creature-in-antarctica-has-survived-more-than-30-ice-ages/
4/27/2020 4:00 PMOnly 10 years ago, scientists working on what they hoped would open a new frontier of neuromorphic computing could only dream of a device using miniature tools called memristors that would function/operate like real brain synapses.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-unveil-electronics-mimic-human-brain.html
4/27/2020 6:00 PMThe expectations of the gravitational-wave research community have been fulfilled: gravitational-wave discoveries are now part of their daily work as they have identified in the past observing run, O3, new gravitational-wave candidates about once a week. But now, the researchers have published a remarkable signal unlike any of those seen before: GW190412 is the first observation of a binary black hole merger where the two black holes have distinctly different masses of about 8 and 30 times that of our Sun.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-ligo-virgo-detectors-gravitational-binary.html
4/28/2020 8:00 AMThe melting of the Eurasian ice sheet around 14,000 years ago lifted global sea levels by about eight metres, according to new research published Monday that highlights the risks of today’s rapid ice cap melt.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-eurasian-ice-sheet-collapse-seas.html
4/28/2020 10:00 AMWhat astronomers thought was a planet beyond our solar system has now seemingly vanished from sight, suggesting that what was heralded as one of the first exoplanets to ever be discovered with direct imaging likely never existed.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-astronomers-planet.html
4/28/2020 12:00 PMDust devils could be swirling around on Saturn’s huge moon Titan, a new study reports. If these dry whirlwinds do indeed s whip across Titan’s surface, they may be the primary movers of dust on the far-off world.https://www.space.com/titan-dust-devils-saturn-largest-moon-dragonfly.html
4/28/2020 2:00 PMAstronomers say that interstellar visitor 2I/Borisov is in some ways very different from comets that come from our own solar system. Close study of the comet, which is now zooming through our solar system, is also revealing insights into how other star systems might have formed.https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/04/20/comet-2-i-borisov-rich-carbon-monoxide-its-unusual-visitor/5166901002/
4/28/2020 4:00 PMFor six minutes, 150 miles above Kiruna, Sweden on January 23, 2017 floated the coldest known spot in the universe. As far as we know, the coldest anything in nature can be is absolute zero on the Kelvin scale, which is –459.67°F and –273.15°C. This postage-stamp-sized atom chip packed tight with thousands of rubidium-87 atoms was just a few billionths of a degree warmer than that.https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/bose-einstein-condensate-in-space
4/28/2020 6:00 PMWhat was thought to be a planet beyond our solar system appears to have disappeared, astronomers say. And the unexpected behaviour has led them to conclude that what they thought was a distant world never actually existed at all.https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/planet-star-nasa-exoplanet-fomalhaut-world-hubble-space-telescope-a9475196.html
4/29/2020 8:00 AMWith 13 weeks to go before the launch period of NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover opens, final preparations of the spacecraft continue at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. On April 8, the assembly, test and launch operations team completed a crucial mass properties test of the rover.https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7643
4/29/2020 10:00 AMDrexel University researchers have reported a method to quickly identify and label mutated versions of the virus that causes COVID-19. Their preliminary analysis, using information from a global database of genetic information gleaned from coronavirus testing, suggests that there are at least six to 10 slightly different versions of the virus infecting people in America, some of which are either the same as, or have subsequently evolved from, strains directly from Asia, while others are the same as those found in Europe.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-genetic-barcode-rapidly-revealing-covid-.html
4/29/2020 12:00 PMResearchers with the world’s gravitational wave detectors said today they had picked up vibrations from a cosmic collision that harmonized with the opening notes of an Elvis Presley hit. The source was the most exotic merger of two black holes detected yet—a pair in which one weighed more than three times as much as the other. Because of the stark mass imbalance, the collision generated gravitational waves at multiple frequencies, in a harmony Elvis fans would recognize. The chord also confirms a prediction of Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, or general relativity.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/gravitational-waves-reveal-unprecedented-collision-heavy-and-light-black-holes
4/29/2020 2:00 PMThis summer, NASA plans to launch its next Mars rover, Perseverance, which will carry with it the first aircraft to ever fly on another planet, the Mars Helicopter. As the first of its kind, the Mars Helicopter will carry no instruments and collect no data—NASA describes merely flying it all as “high-risk, high-reward” research.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-04-nanocardboard-flyers-martian-atmospheric-probes.html
4/29/2020 4:00 PMWhat started as a dry run to ensure instruments on NASA’s Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft worked properly later turned into a 10-year saga that resulted in a chance discovery unrelated to the mission’s target planet, Mercury. It’s about Venus and its atmosphere.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-lucky-messenger-upends-long-held-idea.html
4/29/2020 6:00 PMAstronomer Vera Rubin changed the way we think of the universe by showing that galaxies are mostly dark matter.https://www.space.com/vera-rubin.html
4/30/2020 8:00 AMAs the 21st century progresses, rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations will cause urban and indoor levels of the gas to increase, and that may significantly reduce our basic decision-making ability and complex strategic thinking, according to a new CU Boulder-led study. By the end of the century, people could be exposed to indoor CO2 levels up to 1400 parts per million—more than three times today’s outdoor levels, and well beyond what humans have ever experienced.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-co2-climate-crisisit-ability.html
4/30/2020 10:00 AMFor years, researchers have searched for the working principles of self-assembly that can build a cell (a complex biological organism) as well as a crystal (a far simpler inorganic material) in the same way. Now, a team of scientists in Turkey has demonstrated the fundamental principles of a universal self-assembly process acting on a range of materials—starting from a few atoms-large quantum dots up to nearly 100 trillion atoms-large human cells.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-scientists-uncover-principles-universal-self-assembly.html
4/30/2020 12:00 PMWeakened wind patterns likely spurred the wave of extreme ocean heat that swept the North Pacific last summer, according to new research led by the University of Colorado Boulder and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. The marine heat wave, named the “Blob 2.0” after 2013’s “Blob,” likely damaged marine ecosystems and hurt coastal fisheries. Waters off the U.S. West Coast were a record-breaking 4.5 degrees F (2.5 degrees C) above normal, the authors found.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-weak-pacific-drove-record-breaking-summertime.html
4/30/2020 2:00 PMAir pollution has plummeted over northern India during the country-wide lockdown, implemented to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.https://www.space.com/india-air-pollution-drops-coronavirus-lockdowns.html
4/30/2020 4:00 PMExcessive and sustained rainfall triggered the 2018 eruption of Kīlauea volcano in Hawaii, according to researchers at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. The researchers suggest that local rainfall patterns may contribute significantly to the timing and frequency of the eruption at Kīlauea and perhaps at other volcanoes.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-excessive-triggered-klauea-volcano-eruption.html
4/30/2020 6:00 PMIt wasn’t that long ago that the only known planets in our galaxy were those orbiting our own sun. But over the past few decades, astronomers have discovered thousands of exoplanets and concluded that they outnumber the stars in our galaxy. Many of these alien worlds have fantastic properties, such as planet-wide oceans of lava or clouds that rain iron. Others may have conditions strikingly similar to Earth. We’ll never be able to travel to these distant worlds to see for ourselves, but an audacious mission to interstellar space may allow us to admire them from afar.https://www.wired.com/story/nasa-wants-to-photograph-the-surface-of-an-exoplanet/
5/1/2020 8:00 AMAn enduring question in geology is when Earth’s tectonic plates began pushing and pulling in a process that helped the planet evolve and shaped its continents into the ones that exist today. Some researchers theorize it happened around four billion years ago, while others think it was closer to one billion.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-tectonic-plates-shifting-earlier-previously.html
5/1/2020 10:00 AMT10
5/1/2020 12:00 PMThe common view of heredity is that all information passed down from one generation to the next is stored in an organism’s DNA. But Antony Jose, associate professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at the University of Maryland, disagrees.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-dna-life-bookjust-jumbled-ingredients.html
5/1/2020 2:00 PMHave you ever wondered what kind of rocks make up those bright and dark splotches on the moon? Well, the USGS has just released a new authoritative map to help explain the 4.5-billion-year-old history of our nearest neighbor in space.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-usgs-first-ever-comprehensive-geologic-moon.html
5/1/2020 4:00 PMTheologians once pondered how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Not to be outdone, Cornell researchers who build nanoscale electronics have developed microsensors so tiny, they can fit 30,000 on one side of a penny.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-04-tiny-sensors-penny-transmit-tissue.html
5/1/2020 6:00 PMWith a captivating new photo, the “Cosmic Reef,” NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope showcases the instruments’ incredible capabilities on its 30th anniversary.https://www.space.com/hubble-30-anniversary-nasa-cosmic-reef-image.html
5/2/2020 8:00 AMTogether with an international team, Senckenberg scientist Uwe Fritz described a new species of mata mata turtle based on genetic analyses. Until now, it had been assumed that the genus Chelus only contained a single species. The new description also necessitates a reassessment of the conservation status of these species, which are frequently sold in the illegal animal trade.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-species-turtle.html
5/2/2020 10:00 AMT10
5/2/2020 12:00 PMNot only does a universal constant seem annoyingly inconstant at the outer fringes of the cosmos, it occurs in only one direction, which is downright weird.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-laws-nature-downright-weird-constant.html
5/2/2020 2:00 PMhttps://cen.acs.org/biological-chemistry/infectious-disease/Periodic-Graphics-does-immunity-work/98/i16
5/2/2020 4:00 PMHumpback whales are normally pretty solitary—scientists used to call groups of 10 to 20 “large.” Now they’re congregating in groups of 20 to 200 off the coast of South Africa. Something is definitely going on here, but so far experts are stumped.https://www.popsci.com/humpback-whales-are-organizing/
5/2/2020 6:00 PMA once-extinct bird species “re-evolved” itself into existence and returned to the island it once colonized thousands of years ago, researchers say.https://www.usnews.com/news/world-report/articles/2019-05-10/extinct-bird-re-evolved-itself-back-into-existence-on-island-in-seychelles
5/3/2020 8:00 AMhttps://www.healthyfoodhouse.com/rainbow-snake-seen-in-floridas-ocala-national-forest-for-first-time-since-1969/
5/3/2020 10:00 AMT10
5/3/2020 12:00 PMThe quantum world blatantly defies intuitions that we’ve developed while living among relatively large things, like cars, pennies and dust motes. In the quantum world, tiny particles can maintain a special connection over any distance, pass through barriers and simultaneously travel down multiple paths.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-quantum-gases-wont.html
5/3/2020 2:00 PMBy analyzing spectroscopic data, astronomers have investigated the globular cluster Omega Centauri, aiming to find a population of stars with very low metallicity. The study resulted in the detection of the 11 most metal-poor stars in this cluster.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-metal-poor-stars-omega-centauri-cluster.html
5/3/2020 4:00 PMAlbert Einstein famously postulated that “the only real valuable thing is intuition,” arguably one of the most important keys to understanding intention and communication. But intuitiveness is hard to teach—especially to a machine. Looking to improve this, a team from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) came up with a method that dials us closer to more seamless human-robot collaboration.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-04-conduct-a-bot-muscle-enable-natural-human-robot.html
5/3/2020 6:00 PMTar, the everyday material that seals seams in our roofs and driveways, has an unexpected and unappreciated complexity, according to an MIT research team: It might someday be useful as a raw material for a variety of high-tech devices including energy storage systems, thermally active coatings, and electronic sensors.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-coal-reveals-sophisticated-side-dirty.html
5/4/2020 8:00 AMThe loss of insulin-secreting beta cells by autoimmune destruction leads to type 1 diabetes. Clinical islet cell transplantation has the potential to cure diabetes, but donor pancreases are rare. In a new study, a group of researchers developed an improved pluripotent stem cell differentiation protocol to generate beta cells in vitro with superior glucose response and insulin secretion. This is a major step toward beta cell replacement therapy.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-beta-cells-stem-potential-cell.html
5/4/2020 10:00 AMT10
5/4/2020 12:00 PMRutgers engineers have created a highly effective way to paint complex 3-D-printed objects, such as lightweight frames for aircraft and biomedical stents, that could save manufacturers time and money and provide new opportunities to create “smart skins” for printed parts.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-great-d-printed.html
5/4/2020 2:00 PMDelivering water to city dwellers can become far more efficient, according to Rice University researchers who say it should involve a healthy level of recycled wastewater.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-recycling-slash-cities-fresh-resources.html
5/4/2020 4:00 PMUnderstanding the behavior of proteins and enzymes is key to unlocking the secrets of biological processes. The atomic structures of proteins are generally investigated using X-ray crystallography; however, the precise information for hydrogen atoms and protons (hydrogen ions) is usually unattainable. Now a team including Osaka University, Osaka Medical College, National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology, Ibaraki University, and University of Tsukuba has used neutron crystallography to reveal high-resolution structural details of a very large oxidase protein.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-neutron-proton.html
5/4/2020 6:00 PMA UCLA-led research team today reports that it has developed a new method for delivering DNA into stem cells and immune cells safely, rapidly and economically. The method could give scientists a new tool for manufacturing gene therapies for people with cancer, genetic disorders and blood diseases.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-gene-therapies-cancer-genetic-disorders.html
5/5/2020 8:00 AMThe movie Avatar evoked an imaginary world of lush bioluminescent jungles. Now the popular fascination for sustainably glowing foliage is being realized through advances in designer genetics.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-sustainable.html
5/5/2020 10:00 AMT10
5/5/2020 12:00 PMThe fundamental laws of physics are based on symmetries that determine the interactions between charged particles, among other things. Using ultracold atoms, researchers at Heidelberg University have experimentally constructed the symmetries of quantum electrodynamics. They hope to gain new insights for implementing future quantum technologies that can simulate complex physical phenomena.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-quantum-electrodynamics-major-large-scale.html
5/5/2020 2:00 PMComet ATLAS (formally known as C/2019 Y4) has disintegrated before our very eyes, and two new images from the Hubble Space Telescope show the comet has crumbled into 25 pieces.https://www.space.com/comet-atlas-disintegration-hubble-telescope-photos.html
5/5/2020 4:00 PMhttps://videos.space.com/m/aqfjy1bg/see-mars-helicopter-ingenuity-take-off-while-rover-watches-in-new-animation
5/5/2020 6:00 PMScientists have long opposed the idea that dinosaurs lived in aquatic habitats. Now, an international team of researchers, supported by the National Geographic Society, has discovered unambiguous evidence that Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, the longest predatory dinosaur known to science, was aquatic and used tail-propelled swimming locomotion to hunt for prey in a massive river system. It is the first time that such an adaptation has been reported in a dinosaur.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-fossils-rewrite-story-dinosaurs-spinosaurus.html
5/6/2020 8:00 AMA small newfound asteroid gave Earth a close shave April 28. The asteroid, called 2020 HS7, is between 13 and 24 feet (4 to 8 meters) in size and passed Earth at a distance of 23,000 miles (36,400 kilometers) when it made its closest approach at 2:51 p.m. EDT (1851 GMT). That range is close to the orbits of some geosynchronous satellites about 22,000 miles (36,000 km) above Earth.https://www.space.com/small-asteroid-2020-hs7-buzzes-earth-ahead-of-big-space-rock.html
5/6/2020 10:00 AMT10
5/6/2020 12:00 PMIceberg A-68 is large enough to hold New York City five times over — and it may finally be cracking to its doom.https://www.livescience.com/worlds-largest-iceberg-dying.html
5/6/2020 2:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/planetarysociety/posts/10157809339634845
5/6/2020 4:00 PMAn international research project has revealed the highest levels of microplastic ever recorded on the seafloor, with up to 1.9 million pieces in a thin layer covering just 1 square meter.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-scientists-highest-microplastics-seafloor.html
5/6/2020 6:00 PMScientists in the University of Maryland (UMD)’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) have reinvented a 26,000-year-old manufacturing process into an innovative approach to fabricating ceramic materials that has promising applications for solid-state batteries, fuel cells, 3-D printing technologies, and beyond.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-superfast-method-ceramic-door-ai-driven.html
5/7/2020 8:00 AMUsing the most advanced Earth-observing laser instrument NASA has ever flown in space, scientists have made precise, detailed measurements of how the elevation of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have changed over 16 years.https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7654
5/7/2020 10:00 AMT10
5/7/2020 12:00 PMHidden within countless materials are valuable properties that will enable the next generation of technologies, like quantum computing and improved solar cells.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-first-of-its-kind-discovery-quantum-technologies.html
5/7/2020 2:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/planetarysociety/posts/10157804830009845
5/7/2020 4:00 PMWhat is the fundamental nature of reality? Is space-time — the four-dimensional fabric of our universe — ultimately smooth at the tiniest of scales, or something else? It seems impossible to measure, but with the power of advanced telescopes peering through billions of light-years of distance, researchers are beginning to look down. Deep down.https://www.space.com/space-time-smooth-chunky-quantum-gravity.html
5/7/2020 6:00 PMFive centuries after Charles I of Spain authorized the transport of the first African slaves to the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the ancestry of the hundreds of thousands of abducted and enslaved people forms an integral part of the genetic and cultural heritage of the Americas. The origins and experiences of those enslaved individuals, however, remains largely unknown.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-african-skeletons-early-colonial-mexico.html
5/8/2020 8:00 AMA new study from University of Michigan climate researchers concludes that some of the latest-generation climate models may be overly sensitive to carbon dioxide increases and therefore project future warming that is unrealistically high.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-latest-climate-unrealistically-high-future.html
5/8/2020 10:00 AMT10
5/8/2020 12:00 PMA discovery that long eluded physicists has been detected in a laboratory at Princeton. A team of physicists detected superconducting currents—the flow of electrons without wasting energy—along the exterior edge of a superconducting material.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-supercurrent-edge-superconductor-topological.html
5/8/2020 2:00 PMThe next generation of powerful Earth- and space-based telescopes will be able to hunt distant solar systems for evidence of life on Earth-like exoplanets—particularly those that chaperone burned-out stars known as white dwarfs.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-astronomers-life-orbiting-long-dead-stars.html
5/8/2020 4:00 PMOur solar system has a king. The planet Jupiter, named for the most powerful god in the Greek pantheon, has bossed around the other planets through its gravitational influence. With twice the mass of Saturn, and 300 times that of Earth, Jupiter’s slightest movement is felt by all the other planets. Jupiter is thought to be responsible for the small size of Mars, the presence of the asteroid belt, and a cascade of comets that delivered water to young Earth.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-newly-exoplanet-dethrones-king-kepler-.html
5/8/2020 6:00 PMWhether it’s water flowing across a condenser plate in an industrial plant, or air whooshing through heating and cooling ducts, the flow of fluid across flat surfaces is a phenomenon at the heart of many of the processes of modern life. Yet, aspects of this process have been poorly understood, and some have been taught incorrectly to generations of engineering students, a new analysis shows.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-textbook-formulas-characteristics-crucial-industries.html
5/9/2020 8:00 AMLast month, scientists had spotted the formation of an unusual hole in the ozone layer over the Arctic region. European Union’s Earth observation programme Copernicus recently announced that the ozone hole forming over the North Pole is now closed.https://weather.com/en-IN/india/news/news/2020-04-28-largest-ozone-layer-hole-formed-arctic-last-month-now-closed
5/9/2020 10:00 AMT10
5/9/2020 12:00 PMAn estimated one-third of the Earth’s microbes are literally hidden, buried in sediments deep below the ocean floor. Now, scientists have shown that these “deep biosphere” microbes aren’t staying put but are bubbling up to the ocean floor along with fluids from buried petroleum reservoirs.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-window-world-life-seafloor-petroleum.html
5/9/2020 2:00 PMVirgin Galactic’s spaceship VSS Unity landed in the New Mexico desert, marking its first glide flight from Spaceport America as the company moves toward commercial operations.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-virgin-galactic-glide-flight-mexico.html
5/9/2020 4:00 PMArmy researchers predict quantum computer circuits that will no longer need extremely cold temperatures to function could become a reality after about a decade.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-path-quantum-room-temperature.html
5/9/2020 6:00 PMThe surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa features a widely varied landscape, including ridges, bands, small rounded domes and disrupted spaces that geologists call “chaos terrain.” Three newly reprocessed images, taken by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s, reveal details in diverse surface features on Europa.https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7656
5/10/2020 8:00 AMResearchers have uncovered the earliest evidence of a person being hit and killed by a meteorite falling to Earth. A group of Turkish researchers made the discovery while searching through Turkish state archives and they found that the event, which killed one person and injured another, occurred in what is now Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, on Aug. 22, 1888.https://www.space.com/earliest-evidence-meteorite-killed-person.html
5/10/2020 10:00 AMT10
5/10/2020 12:00 PMNot every lightning strike is the same. Some skip from cloud to cloud. Others strike the ground, delivering a shocking wallop to anything that gets in the way. Lightning differs by how strong it is, too. Scientists have observed mega-strikes of lightning that carry 1,000 times more energy than ordinary bolts. They’re so intense that, about four decades ago, a scientist had to coin a new word to describe them: Superbolts!https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/hotspots-found-lightnings-superbolts
5/10/2020 2:00 PMAt the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, researchers have gained insights into a promising material for organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). The substance enables high light yields and would be inexpensive to produce on a large scale—that means it is practically made for use in large-area room lighting. Researchers have been searching for such materials for a long time. The newly generated understanding will facilitate the rapid and cost-efficient development of new lighting appliances in the future.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-material-future.html
5/10/2020 4:00 PMThe first step in many light-driven chemical reactions, like the ones that power photosynthesis and human vision, is a shift in the arrangement of a molecule’s electrons as they absorb the light’s energy. This subtle rearrangement paves the way for everything that follows and determines how the reaction proceeds.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-electrons-chemical-reaction.html
5/10/2020 6:00 PMA study conducted by a team of national laboratory and NASA researchers has found that the environment of the International Space Station is affected by the microbial composition of the astronauts themselves.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-space-station-surface-microbial-profile.html
5/11/2020 8:00 AMAfter his accident, Ian Burkhart didn’t think he’d ever be able to move or feel his hand again. A small chip in his brain changed everything.https://www.wired.com/story/a-brain-implant-restored-this-mans-motion-and-sense-of-touch/
5/11/2020 10:00 AMJupiter’s already vibrant colors become especially striking in this artistic interpretation of an image from NASA’s Juno mission that shows the planet’s famous Great Red Spot. Citizen scientist Mary J. Murphy processed an image from the spacecraft’s JunoCam instrument, increasing the color saturation to create a piece Murphy calls “The Rose.”https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA23804
5/11/2020 12:00 PMLast summer, a new age for high-temperature superconductivity was proclaimed—the nickel age. It was discovered that there are promising superconductors in a special class of materials, the so-called nickelates, which can conduct electric current without any resistance even at high temperatures.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-superconductivity-hydrogen-fault.html
5/11/2020 2:00 PMVirgin Galactic conducted the first test flight of SpaceShipTwo from its New Mexico spaceport May 1 as the company edges closer to finally beginning commercial flights of the suborbital spaceplane.https://spacenews.com/spaceshiptwo-makes-first-flight-from-spaceport-america/
5/11/2020 4:00 PMRocket Lab has tested an Electron rocket on its new launch pad in Virginia ahead of a launch that has been pushed back to later this year.https://spacenews.com/rocket-lab-tests-electron-on-new-virginia-launch-pad/
5/11/2020 6:00 PMAs volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occasionally remind us, the earth beneath our feet is constantly on the move.https://www.visualcapitalist.com/incredible-map-of-pangea-with-modern-borders/
5/12/2020 8:00 AMMeganeura is a genus of extinct insects from the Carboniferous period (approximately 300 million years ago), which resembled and are related to the present-day dragonflies. Its wingspans from 65 cm (25.6 in) to more than 70 cm (28 in), M.Monyi is one of the largest known species of flying insects. Meganeura was predatory and their diet consisted mainly of other insects.http://www.geologypage.com/2020/03/meganeura-the-largest-insect-ever-existed-was-a-giant-dragonfly.html
5/12/2020 10:00 AMA new photo shows just how big SpaceX’s Starship Mars-colonizing vehicle will be. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk tweeted an image Sunday (May 3) looking up at the belly of the latest Starship prototype, the SN4, which is on the test stand at the company’s South Texas site. The shot shows the SN4’s single Raptor engine, looking extremely lonely in the center of a 30-foot-wide (9 meters) expanse.https://www.space.com/starship-sn4-rocket-engine-elon-musk-photo.html
5/12/2020 12:00 PMBlood flow in the human body is generally assumed to be smooth due to its low speed and high viscosity. Unsteadiness in blood flow is linked to various cardiovascular diseases and has been shown to promote dysfunction and inflammation in the inner layer of blood vessels, the endothelium. In turn, this can lead to the development of arteriosclerosis—a leading cause of death worldwide—where arterial pathways in the body narrow due to plaque buildup. However, the source of this unsteadiness is not well understood. Now, IST Austria professor Björn Hof, together with an international team of researchers, has shown that pulsating blood flows, such as those from our heart, react strongly to geometric irregularities in vessels (such as plaque buildup) and cause much higher levels of velocity fluctuations than previously expected. The research could have implications on how we study blood flow related diseases in the future.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-blood-turbulent-previously.html
5/12/2020 2:00 PMWithin the space of less than a month, two specimens of a vanishingly rare fish have been plucked from the waters of the Rioni River in Georgia. Before these two juveniles were caught, conservationists had expressed fears that the critically endangered ship sturgeon might have already sunk without trace. This extraordinary, other-worldly fish—whose evolution dates back hundreds of millions of years—had not been seen alive in the wild for many years.https://phys.org/news/2020-04-discovery-fish-brink-extinction.html
5/12/2020 4:00 PMhttps://www.sbnation.com/2020/5/5/21248563/watch-murder-hornets-killed-by-bees
5/12/2020 6:00 PMA newfound black hole may be the closest black hole to Earth, and you can spot its cosmic home in the night sky without a telescope.https://www.livescience.com/closest-black-hole-to-earth-discovered.html
5/13/2020 8:00 AMThe U.S. military’s mysterious X-37B space plane is just 3 days away from launching on its next mission.https://www.space.com/x-37b-space-plane-secret-mission-otv-6-launch-date.html
5/13/2020 10:00 AMUsing NASA space lasers, scientists have tracked how ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic have changed over the last 16 years, showing the drastic effects of climate change.https://www.space.com/nasa-space-lasers-track-climate-change-icesat-2.html
5/13/2020 12:00 PMAlready known for their shape-shifting abilities, stem cells can now add “death-defying” to their list of remarkable qualities. A new study shows how stem cells—which can contribute to creating many parts of the body, not just one organ or body part—are able to postpone their own death in order to respond to an injury that needs their attention.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-stem-cells-shown-death-aid.html
5/13/2020 2:00 PMResearchers have spent decades looking for evidence of ancient water on Mars. As technology has progressed, more evidence has come to light that rivers, lakes and even oceans were once abundant on the red planet.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-ancient-river-mars-unparalleled.html
5/13/2020 4:00 PMhttps://phys.org/news/2020-05-high-resolution-d-mouse-brain.html
5/13/2020 6:00 PMSnakes should be good at social distancing, at least according to what we know about reptiles: Most are solitary creatures that come together to mate and hibernate, but not much else. Not so garter snakes, the harmless serpents that live throughout North America and part of Central America. Researchers have discovered that garter snakes not only prefer to hang out together, but also seem to have “friends” with whom they spend much of their time.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/garter-snakes-are-surprisingly-social-forming-friendships-fellow-serpents
5/14/2020 8:00 AMWe can now add atmospheric craziness to WASP-79b’s already substantial exotic appeal. The gas-giant exoplanet, which lies about 780 light-years from Earth, circles extremely close to its bright host star, completing one orbit every 3.7 Earth days. That proximity makes WASP-79b scorching hot, with an average temperature around 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 degrees Celsius), NASA officials said.https://www.space.com/giant-hot-alien-planet-wasp-79b-has-yellow-skies.html
5/14/2020 10:00 AMA team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in Japan has found evidence of embedded carbon emissions on the moon. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their study of carbon data from the KAGUYA lunar orbiter and what they learned from it.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-carbon-emissions-moon-theory-birth.html
5/14/2020 12:00 PMTel Aviv University (TAU) researchers have developed a safe and accurate 3-D imaging method to identify sperm cells moving at a high speed.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-accurate-d-imaging-sperm-cells.html
5/14/2020 2:00 PMA spacecraft that died in 2017 is still providing insights about Saturn, the planet it studied up close for 13 years. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft helped scientists to discover why Saturn’s upper atmosphere is so hot, which puzzled planetary scientists for decades since the planet is too far from the sun to receive our star’s heat. But, using old data from Cassini, scientists are closer to solving this mystery.https://www.space.com/saturn-hot-atmosphere-mystery-cassini-spacecraft-discovery.html
5/14/2020 4:00 PMResearchers using a technique known as “lucky imaging” with the Gemini North telescope on Hawaii’s Maunakea have collected some of the highest resolution images of Jupiter ever obtained from the ground. These images are part of a multi-year joint observing program with the Hubble Space Telescope in support of NASA’s Juno mission. The Gemini images, when combined with the Hubble and Juno observations, reveal that lightning strikes, and some of the largest storm systems that create them, are formed in and around large convective cells over deep clouds of water ice and liquid. The new observations also confirm that dark spots in the famous Great Red Spot are actually gaps in the cloud cover and not due to cloud color variations.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-gemini-lucky-deep-jupiter-clouds.html
5/14/2020 6:00 PMMany galaxies far more active than the Milky Way have enormous twin jets of radio waves extending far into intergalactic space. Normally these go in opposite directions, coming from a massive black hole at the centre of the galaxy. However, a few are more complicated and appear to have four jets forming an ‘X’ on the sky.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-south-africa-meerkat-mystery-x-galaxies.html
5/15/2020 8:00 AMExotic atoms in which electrons are replaced by other subatomic particles of the same charge allow deep insights into the quantum world. After eight years of ongoing research, a group led by Masaki Hori, senior physicist at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, has now succeeded in a challenging experiment: In a helium atom, they replaced an electron with a pion in a specific quantum state and verified the existence of this long-lived “pionic helium” for the very first time. The usually short-lived pion could thereby exist 1000 times longer than it normally would in other varieties of matter. Pions belong to an important family of particles that determine the stability and decay of atomic nuclei. The pionic helium atom enables scientists to study pions in an extremely precise manner using laser spectroscopy.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-long-lived-pionic-helium-exotic-experimentally.html
5/15/2020 10:00 AMMost everyone knows that humid heat is harder to handle than the “dry” kind. And recently, some scientists have projected that later in the century, in parts of the tropics and subtropics, warming climate could cause combined heat and humidity to reach levels rarely if ever experienced before by humans. Such conditions would ravage economies, and possibly even surpass the physiological limits of human survival.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-potentially-fatal-combinations-humidity-emerging.html
5/15/2020 12:00 PMPhysicists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) have invented a new radar prototype that uses quantum entanglement as a method of object detection. This successful integration of quantum mechanics into devices could significantly impact the biomedical and security industries.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-scientists-quantum-radar-prototype.html
5/15/2020 2:00 PMThe world’s largest hornet – the size of a matchbox – is known for invading honeybee hives, decapitating all the bees in a matter of hours and carrying the mangled thoraxes back to feed their young. And now they’re in the United States.https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/asian-hornets-bees-us-new-species-science-news-a9496956.html
5/15/2020 4:00 PMIn recent years, giant viruses have been unearthed in several of the world’s most mysterious locations, from the thawing permafrost of Siberia to locations unknown beneath the Antarctic ice. But don’t worry, “The Thing” is still a work of science fiction. For now.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-mysterious-giant-viruses.html
5/15/2020 6:00 PMThe olm, the blind cave salamander of Southern Europe is one of the most unique amphibians in the world. It is rare, pinkish-white and blind, and reproduces just once or twice a decade during its entire lifetime.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/olm-eggs-tense-wait-for-baby-slovenian-dragons/
5/16/2020 8:00 AMResearchers from University of Sydney have identified the single gene that determines how Cape honey bees reproduce without ever having sex. One gene, GB45239 on chromosome 11, is responsible for virgin births.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-gene-honey-bees-virgin-birth.html
5/16/2020 10:00 AMHydrogen is an essential commodity with over 60 million tons produced globally every year. However over 95 percent of it is made by steam reformation of fossil fuels, a process that is energy intensive and produces carbon dioxide. If we could replace even a part of that with algal biohydrogen that is made via light and water, it would have a substantial impact.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-05-scientists-rewire-photosynthesis-fuel-future.html
5/16/2020 12:00 PMIf lightning exists on Mars, it may be less energetic and frequent than lightning on Earth, all because of the Red Planet’s thin air, a new study finds. Scientists announced the first evidence of lightning on Mars in 2009, after they detected microwave emissions from a 2006 dust storm on the Red Planet that the researchers suggested came from sudden, huge electrical discharges.https://www.space.com/mars-lightning-weak-thin-atmosphere.html
5/16/2020 2:00 PMA new method for reliably identifying the presence of beer or other malted foodstuffs in archaeological finds is described in a study published May 6, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Andreas G. Heiss from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW), Austria and colleagues. A beverage with prehistoric roots, beer played ritual, social, and dietary roles across ancient societies. However, it’s not easy to positively identify archaeological evidence of cereal-based alcoholic beverages like beer, since most clear markers for beer’s presence lack durability or reliability.https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-05/p-bwh042920.php
5/16/2020 4:00 PMAs public opinion changes and consumption of whale meat declines, commercial whaling may be one step closer to a permanent end in Iceland and possibly the world. For the second year in a row, Iceland, one of three remaining whaling nations, will not hunt any whales.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/commercial-whaling-may-be-over-iceland/
5/16/2020 6:00 PMStraddling the finger of this human being is a terrifying beast, the likes of which we rarely see in the flesh. It is a mighty red octopus juvenile. And it’s the size of a man’s thumbnail.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/fear-me-the-mighty-kraken/
5/17/2020 8:00 AMEveryone wants to get off the planet Earth and go explore the solar system, without realizing just how good we’ve got it down here. We’ve got a lot of air, more liquid water than we know what to do with, a nice strong planetary magnetic field that protects us cosmic radiation, and nice strong gravity that keeps our muscles strong and our bones thick.https://www.space.com/venus-runaway-greenhouse-effect-earth-next.html
5/17/2020 10:00 AMPublic health advice for avoiding respiratory illness is largely unchanged since the Spanish flu of 1918, one of history’s deadliest pandemics. Keep a safe distance from other people. Wash your hands frequently with soap and water to kill any germs you may have picked up. Cover your nose and mouth with a face mask—even one fashioned from a bandana will do. Such guidance is based on the understanding that respiratory infections spread through virus-carrying droplets that are expelled when infected people cough, sneeze, or breathe.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-fluid-dynamics-covid-spreadand.html
5/17/2020 12:00 PMScientists around the world are intensively working on memristive devices that draw extremely low power and behave similarly to neurons in the brain. Researchers from the Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA) and the German technology group Heraeus now report the systematic control of the functional behavior of these elements. The smallest differences in material composition turned out to be crucial, so small that until now, experts had failed to notice them. The researchers’ design directions could help to increase variety, efficiency, selectivity and reliability for memristive technology-based applications, for example, energy-efficient, non-volatile storage devices or neuro-inspired computers.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-memresistor-material-composition-breakthrough.html
5/17/2020 2:00 PMThere is ongoing debate among policymakers and the general public about where SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, came from. While researchers consider bats the most likely natural hosts for SARS-CoV-2, the origins of the virus are still unclear. On May 10 in the journal Current Biology, researchers describe a recently identified bat coronavirus that is SARS-CoV-2’s closest relative in some regions of the genome and which contains insertions of amino acids at the junction of the S1 and S2 subunits of the virus’s spike protein in a manner similar to SAR-CoV-2. While it’s not a direct evolutionary precursor of SARS-CoV-2, this new virus, RmYN02, suggests that these types of seemingly unusual insertion events can occur naturally in coronavirus evolution, the researchers say.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-relative-sars-cov-evidence-evolved-naturally.html
5/17/2020 4:00 PMScientists from The University of Western Australian and University of Cambridge have made a chance discovery in UK museum collections, finding hollow ball-like structures in 80-million-year-old fossils from species believed to be related to starfish and sea urchins.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-strange-hollow-ball-like-million-year-old-fossils.html
5/17/2020 6:00 PMWomen are more likely to conceive fraternal twins once they reach their 30s as a result of an evolutionary response to combat declining embryo viability, according to a new international collaboration involving researchers at The University of Western Australia.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-older-women-twins-due-evolution.html
5/18/2020 8:00 AMThe fossils of four ancient armadillos the size of cars have been discovered by a farmer in Argentina. A farmer in Argentina has uncovered the preserved shells of four giant ‘ancient armadillo’ creatures called Glyptodonts that roamed the earth around 20,000 years ago.http://www.geologyin.com/2020/02/ancient-armadillo-size-of-car.html
5/18/2020 10:00 AMThere’s an extensive system of haze layers in the bizarre hexagon on Saturn, a new study has found.https://www.space.com/saturn-hexagon-weird-haze-discovery.html
5/18/2020 12:00 PMMars is wetter than previously thought, but not in a way that boosts its life-hosting potential, a new study suggests.https://www.space.com/mars-wetter-than-thought-brines.html
5/18/2020 2:00 PMDavid Storm, a research physicist, and Tyler Growden, an electrical engineer, both with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, developed a new gallium nitride-based electrical component called a resonant tunneling diode (RTD) with performance beyond the anticipated speed of 5G.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-electronic-diodes-5g.html
5/18/2020 4:00 PMThere are places on Earth that are a little creepy, places that feel a little haunted and places that are downright hellish. The Darvaza gas crater, nicknamed by locals “The Door to Hell,” or “The Gates of Hell,” definitely falls into the latter category—and its sinister burning flames are just the half of it. Located in the Karakum Desert of central Turkmenistan (a little over 150 miles from the country’s capital) the pit attracts hundreds of tourists each year. It also attracts nearby desert wildlife—reportedly, from time to time local spiders are seen plunging into the pit by the thousands, lured to their deaths by the glowing flames.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/giant-hole-ground-has-been-fire-more-40-years-180951247/
5/18/2020 6:00 PMGreat white sharks are considered the ocean’s top predators, and aside from orcas, they are apex predators wherever they roam. However, while orcas have been known to feast upon great white sharks, great whites face an even greater threat from other great whites. Just watch what happens when this small great white bumps into a much larger great white.https://roaring.earth/great-white-vs-sh/
5/19/2020 8:00 AMEngineers at Duke University have shown that nanosized silver cubes can make diagnostic tests that rely on fluorescence easier to read by making them more than 150 times brighter. Combined with an emerging point-of-care diagnostic platform already shown capable of detecting small traces of viruses and other biomarkers, the approach could allow such tests to become much cheaper and more widespread.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-silver-nanocubes-point-of-care-diagnostics-easier.html
5/19/2020 10:00 AMA new study from researchers at North Carolina State University suggests that a material consisting of a polymer compound embedded with bismuth trioxide particles holds tremendous potential for replacing conventional radiation shielding materials, such as lead.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-polymer-composite-lighter-non-toxic-shielding.html
5/19/2020 12:00 PMA great wave submerged an ancient fishing village in present-day Tanzania, prompting researchers to revisit the risk of tsunamis on Africa’s east coast.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/05/1000-year-old-bones-oldest-known-east-africa-tsunami-victims/
5/19/2020 2:00 PMWhen women catch the scent of a newborn baby, their dopamine pathways in a region of the brain associated with reward learning light up. (yes, the article’s from 2013, but we still find it interesting)https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-smell-of-newborn-babies-triggers-the-same-reward-centers-as-drugs-58482/
5/19/2020 4:00 PMEarth may have been far more oxygen-rich early in its history than previously thought, setting the stage for the evolution of complex life, according to new research by scientists at the University of Alberta and the University of Tartu in Estonia. The study provides evidence for elevated oxygen levels 2 billion years ago and flies in the face of previously accepted models.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-ancient-high-oxygen-earth-billion.html
5/19/2020 6:00 PMhttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/05/gigantic-locust-swarms-hit-east-africa/
5/20/2020 8:00 AMThe HMS Beagle had many lives. It first launched on the River Thames on May 11, 1820, as a ten-gun brig in the Royal Navy, but was soon after converted into a research vessel. Most famously, the vessel played host to thefive-year journey on which Charles Darwin gathered the evidence that would lead to the theory of evolution.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dock-where-darwins-hms-beagle-last-moored-gets-protected-status-180974853/
5/20/2020 10:00 AMDuring the next couple of weeks we’ll have a chance of seeing a new comet as it sweeps past the sun. The comet’s name is SWAN, an acronym for the Solar Wind Anisotropies camera on NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Officially designated as C/2020 F8, the comet was discovered by Australian amateur astronomer, Michael Mattiazzo, while exploring SWAN imagery on March 25.https://www.space.com/comet-swan-may-be-dimming.html
5/20/2020 12:00 PMScientists looked back in time to offer new evidence suggesting that plumes of water vapor shoot out into space from Jupiter’s moon Europa.https://www.space.com/europa-water-vapor-plumes-new-evidence.html
5/20/2020 2:00 PMEarlier this month, SpaceX engineers completed the 27th and final test of the parachute system that will soon be responsible for carrying astronauts back to Earth. When the four parachute canopies successfully unfurled over the Mojave Desert, it indicated that the company was finally ready to start sending humans to space after nearly a decade of relentless testing and dramatic setbacks. Now SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule is on the cusp of becoming only the fifth American spacecraft to ever be certified by NASA for human spaceflight. But before that happens, the company has to pass a final high-stakes test: sending a pair of astronauts into orbit and bringing them safely back home.https://www.wired.com/story/how-nasa-certifies-new-spacecraft-safe-enough-for-humans/
5/20/2020 4:00 PMCorals with increased heat tolerance have the potential to reduce the impact of reef bleaching from marine heat waves, which are becoming more common under climate change.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-scientists-successfully-resistant-coral.html
5/20/2020 6:00 PMPerched atop the mountain Haleakalā on the island of Maui in Hawaii, the National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope stares up toward the sun. The telescope, nicknamed DKIST, was scheduled to open in the summer of 2020 atop the mountain’s summit, which has long been lauded for its incredible views of the sun, with tourists flocking to the peak to view incredible sunsets. The mountain’s name is actually Hawaiian for ‘house of the sun,’ making it a fitting place for the world’s largest solar telescope.https://www.space.com/inoye-solar-sun-telescope-hawaii-tour.html
5/21/2020 8:00 AMYou’ve probably seen the satellite images that show a hurricane developing: thick white clouds clumping together, arms spinning around a central eye as it heads for the coast. After decades of research, meteorologists still have questions about how hurricanes develop. Now, Florida State University researchers have found that even the smallest changes in atmospheric conditions could trigger a hurricane, information that will help scientists understand the processes that lead to these devastating storms.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-small-disturbances-trigger-catastrophic-storms.html
5/21/2020 10:00 AMMasks, gowns, and other personal protective equipment (PPE) are essential for protecting healthcare workers. However, the textiles and materials used in such items can absorb and carry viruses and bacteria, inadvertently spreading the disease the wearer sought to contain.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-durable-washable-textile-coating-repel.html
5/21/2020 12:00 PMThe thin atmosphere of Pluto may be far more resilient than scientists thought.https://www.space.com/pluto-atmosphere-hazy-resilient-nasa-sofia.html
5/21/2020 2:00 PMNewly released genomes from Neolithic East Asia have unveiled a missing piece of human prehistory, according to a study conducted by Prof. Fu Qiaomei’s team from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-ancient-dna-unveils-important-piece.html
5/21/2020 4:00 PMChristie’s auction house posted a tantalizing online offer that is, quite literally, out of this world: a 29-pound hunk of moon, up for sale for the price of $2.5 million.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/christies-auction-house-offers-29-pound-hunk-moon-25-million-180974807/
5/21/2020 6:00 PMA new video shows what it would look like if four rocket types were transparent during liftoff and stage separation — even showing how the fuel drains as the rockets keep firing.https://futurism.com/amazing-vid-rockets-transparent
5/22/2020 8:00 AMWe’ll have to wait another few years to see a Japanese company’s first big artificial-meteor sky show. Tokyo-based ALE (Astro Live Experiences) had planned to generate “shooting stars” this year with its ALE-2 satellite, which launched to Earth orbit in December 2019 atop a Rocket Lab Electron booster. The 165-lb. (75 kilograms) spacecraft is packed with 400 0.4-inch-wide (1 centimeter) spheres, which are designed to blaze in brilliant colors when they burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. But ALE-2 will be unable to deploy the spheres, the company announced last month.https://www.space.com/japan-shooting-star-satellite-artificial-meteor-shower-glitch.html
5/22/2020 10:00 AMNASA is setting some guidelines for humanity’s return to the moon. The space agency has long stressed that international collaboration will be key to its Artemis program, which aims to land two astronauts near the lunar south pole in 2024 and establish a sustainable human presence on and around the moon by 2028. And on May 15, NASA unveiled some bedrock principles that foreign partners will have to abide by.https://www.space.com/nasa-artemis-accords-moon-exploration.html
5/22/2020 12:00 PMBelow the ice-covered surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus hides a vast ocean. This sprawling ocean is likely 1 billion years old, which means it’s the perfect age to harbor life, said Marc Neveu, a research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.https://www.space.com/enceladus-billion-year-old-ocean.html
5/22/2020 2:00 PMTesla will introduce a new battery later this year that promises longer performance and lower cost that will position the auto manufacturer to bring vehicle prices in line with gasoline-powered competitors.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-05-tesla-battery-poised-reshape-auto.html
5/22/2020 4:00 PMA team of Italian researchers from the BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna and Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn has developed a new and improved version of its Seabed Interaction Legged Vehicle for Exploration and Research (SILVER) with the SILVER2—a robot that can walk around on the seafloor taking video as it goes.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-05-silver2-aquatic-robot-seabed.html
5/22/2020 6:00 PMAround 56 million years ago, several groups of primitive primates mysteriously disappeared from the North American forests. Rodents have been considered a major cause of their extinction due to competition for food, but a new study says that’s unlikely.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/early-primates-went-extinct-in-north-america-but-why/
5/23/2020 8:00 AMThree researchers from Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde in Stuttgart, Naturhistorisches Museum Schloss Bertholdsburg and Urweltmuseum GEOSKOP/Burg Lichtenberg, all in Germany, have found the oldest salamander fossil ever uncovered.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-triassurus-sixtelae-fossil-kyrgyzstan-oldest.html
5/23/2020 10:00 AMSpaceX and NASA are planning a triumphant return to American human spaceflight on May 27, with the SpaceX Demo-2 mission for its Crew Dragon spacecraft. This is the final step required for Crew Dragon to become certified for human flight, after which it’ll enter into regular operational service ferrying people (and some cargo) to the International Space Station on behalf of the U.S. and some of its allies.https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/14/heres-what-spacex-and-nasas-crucial-crew-dragon-mission-should-look-like-on-may-27/
5/23/2020 12:00 PMThis visually stunning insect (Ampulex compressa) is both beautiful and mesmerizing — but holds an incredibly dark secret. The emerald cockroach wasp has a fascinating parenting method and life cycle.https://roaring.earth/wasp-cockroach-zombie/
5/23/2020 2:00 PMThe mystery of some lava-like flows on Mars has been solved by scientists who say they are caused not by lava but by mud. There are tens of thousands of these landforms on the Martian surface, often situated where there are massive channels scoured into the surface by ancient liquids flowing downstream.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-mystery-lava-like-mars-scientists.html
5/23/2020 4:00 PMImmune warriors known as T cells help us fight some viruses, but their importance for battling SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has been unclear. Now, two studies reveal infected people harbor T cells that target the virus—and may help them recover. Both studies also found some people never infected with SARS-CoV-2 have these cellular defenses, most likely because they were previously infected with other coronaviruses.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/t-cells-found-covid-19-patients-bode-well-long-term-immunity
5/23/2020 6:00 PMIn designing electronic devices, scientists look for ways to manipulate and control three basic properties of electrons: their charge; their spin states, which give rise to magnetism; and the shapes of the fuzzy clouds they form around the nuclei of atoms, which are known as orbitals.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-scientists-link-quantum-material-orbital.html
5/24/2020 8:00 AMAn element which could hold the key to the long-standing mystery around why there is much more matter than antimatter in our Universe has been discovered by a University of the West of Scotland (UWS)-led team of physicists.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-longstanding-mystery-antimatter.html
5/24/2020 10:00 AMTo us Earth-dwelling humans, the speed of light is so fast that it appears instantaneous. But zoom out a bit and it becomes clear how even at the speed of light — the theoretical speed limit of the universe, which our spacecraft can’t even begin to approach — a journey through the cosmos becomes a snail-paced slog.https://futurism.com/the-byte/video-shows-slow-light-speed
5/24/2020 12:00 PMA new mathematical model predicts areas on a virus that might be especially vulnerable to disabling treatments.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/geometry-points-to-coronavirus-drug-target-candidates1/
5/24/2020 2:00 PMScientists are using light waves to accelerate supercurrents and access the unique properties of the quantum world, including forbidden light emissions that one day could be applied to high-speed, quantum computers, communications and other technologies.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-scientists-supercurrents-access-forbidden-quantum.html
5/24/2020 4:00 PMA team of researchers from the University of California and CNRS-Sorbonne Université has identified four species of deep-sea worms that until now have been referred to as Elvis worms. In their paper published in the journal ZooKeys, the group describes the worms, how they were named, and some odd behavior they managed to capture on video.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-species-elvis-worm-deep-sea.html
5/24/2020 6:00 PMThe limbs of the earliest four-legged vertebrates from 360 million years ago were not as structurally diverse as previously thought.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/evolutionary-leap-from-fins-to-legs-was-surprisingly-simple/
5/25/2020 8:00 AMA Russian paleontologist visiting the Natural History Museum in London desperately wanted a good look at the skeleton of an extinct aquatic reptile, but its glass case was too far up the wall. So he attached his digital camera to a fishing rod and—with several clicks—snagged a big one, scientifically speaking.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-fishing-rod-selfie-scientific-sleuthing.html
5/25/2020 10:00 AMA leading conservationist and biodiversity scholar, with decades of experience in the Amazon, reflects on the lessons of COVID-19.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/05/to-prevent-pandemics-stop-disrespecting-nature/
5/25/2020 12:00 PMCall them “super polluters”—the handful of industrial facilities that emit unusually high levels of toxic chemical pollution year after year. There are only a few of them, but together they account for the majority of annual industrial pollution.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-year-period-small-percentage-industrial.html
5/25/2020 2:00 PMWhen early tetrapods transitioned from water to land the way they breathed air underwent an evolutionary revolution. Fish use muscles in their head to pump water over their gills. The first land animals utilized a similar technique—modern frogs still use their head and throat to force air into their lungs. Then another major transformation in vertebrate evolution took place that shifted breathing from the head to the torso. In reptiles and mammals, the ribs expand to create a space in the chest that draws in breath. But what caused the shift?https://phys.org/news/2020-05-ribs-evolved-movement-co-opted.html
5/25/2020 4:00 PMYou may have heard that platypuses are going to save us from antibiotic resistance. This may or may not be true. But here’s what we do know: they’re definitely weird enough to pull off a feat like that.https://www.popsci.com/platypus-milk-bacterial-infections/
5/25/2020 6:00 PMPsychedelics such as LSD and magic mushrooms have proven highly effective in treating depression and post-traumatic stress disorders, but medical use of these drugs is limited by the hallucinations they cause.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-powerful-drugs-unwanted-side-effects.html
5/26/2020 8:00 AMBy studying the chemical elements on Mars today—including carbon and oxygen—scientists can work backwards to piece together the history of a planet that once had the conditions necessary to support life.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-curiosity-rover-clues-chilly-ancient.html
5/26/2020 10:00 AMScientists from the University of Bristol and the University of Zurich have shown that the Titanichthys – a giant armoured fish that lived in the seas and oceans of the late Devonian period 380-million-years ago—fed in a similar manner to modern day basking sharks.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-ancient-giant-armored-fish-fed.html
5/26/2020 12:00 PMFour hundred years ago, the astronomer Galileo Galilei announced his discovery of four moons orbiting around the planet Jupiter, each seen as a distinct white dot through his telescope. However, only in the span of the last four decades have astronomers been able to study the Jovian moons in detail to reveal that the four—Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto—are fascinating worlds of their own.https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/dance-jupiters-moons
5/26/2020 2:00 PMKeystone species, scientists have discovered, play a critical role in conservation efforts. Here’s why.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reference/keystone-species/
5/26/2020 4:00 PMScientists in Australia say they have found a way to help coral reefs fight the devastating effects of bleaching by making them more heat-resistant.https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-52661860
5/26/2020 6:00 PMIf you gaze out into the night sky with a telescope, and see beyond what’s visible to the naked eye, you’ll see a lot of stars that are actually imposters. Many of those points of light are actually galaxies — collections of millions to trillions of stars. Galaxies are composed of stars, dust and dark matter, all held together by gravity.https://www.space.com/15680-galaxies.html
5/27/2020 8:00 AMUsing data from NASA’s TESS and Kepler spacecraft, as well as from the Konkoly Observatory, astronomers have inspected flares and superflares of a late-type giant star known as KIC 2852961. Results of the study, presented in a paper published May 11 on arXiv.org, could help astronomers to better understand the mechanism behind flaring events in giant stars.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-astronomers-flaring-giant-star-kic.html
5/27/2020 10:00 AMThat bee you see buzzing from flower to flower might actually be an undercover operator: a hoverfly. And a team of scientists wants you to stop taking them for granted.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-unsung-heroes-hoverflies-key-pollination.html
5/27/2020 12:00 PMScientists have created the first ever large-scale map of microscopic algae as they bloomed across the surface of snow along the Antarctic Peninsula coast. Results indicate that this ‘green snow’ is likely to spread as global temperatures increase.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-climate-coastal-antarctica-green-scientists.html
5/27/2020 2:00 PMIf you ask astronomers how many planets in the universe harbor life, they will likely say there are only two possible answers: one or infinity. We can rule out zero, thanks to the decidedly alive Earth, which means that so far one is the answer. But if we discover another, the answer jumps straight past two to infinity. The reason: You can posit a universe in which the confluence of factors that made life possible here are so complex that the right roll of the dice could statistically happen only once. But if it can happen more than once, why should there be any limit? (Actually, something could be so rare in nature that it happens only two or three times, but the overall zero-one-infinity idea originated with theologians debating atheism, monotheism and infinite polytheism, and planetary scientists just kind of liked it and claimed it as their own.)https://time.com/5763768/toi-700-d-goldilocks-planet/
5/27/2020 4:00 PMAn international team of researchers wondered how volcanoes that spew mud instead of molten rock might look on the Red Planet compared with their counterparts here on Earth. In chamber experiments, simulated Martian mud flows were seen to behave a bit like boiling toothpaste.https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52713131
5/27/2020 6:00 PMThis NASA poster set showcases the beauty of our solar system and beyond. Website links and an optional poster backs with orbit diagrams and context provide additional details and a deeper dive to explore our galactic neighborhood.https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/925/solar-system-and-beyond-poster-set/
5/28/2020 8:00 AMThousands of years ago, a group of people trekked across African soil, and their footprints remain to shine a torch on our ancestors’ movements and behaviours. More than 400 indents were left by bare human feet in Engare Sero, Tanzania, originally spotted by members of a local Maasai community more than a decade ago. Now, paleoanthropological analyses explore what the fossilised tracks reveal about the people who made them.https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/fossil-footprints-a-snapshot-of-past-behaviour
5/28/2020 10:00 AMIn an area stretching from Africa to South America, Earth’s magnetic field is gradually weakening. This strange behaviour has geophysicists puzzled and is causing technical disturbances in satellites orbiting Earth. Scientists are using data from ESA’s Swarm constellation to improve our understanding of this area known as the ‘South Atlantic Anomaly.’https://phys.org/news/2020-05-swarm-probes-weakening-earth-magnetic.html
5/28/2020 12:00 PMThe disk of gas and stars resembles our own Milky Way but somehow formed when the universe was only about 10 percent of its current age.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/astronomers-get-earliest-ever-glimpse-of-ancient-giant-galaxy/
5/28/2020 2:00 PMUsing human population genetics, ancient pathogen genomics and isotope analysis, a team of researchers assessed the population history of the Lake Baikal region, finding the deepest connection to date between the peoples of Siberia and the Americas. The current study, published in the journal Cell, also demonstrates human mobility, and hence connectivity, across Eurasia during the Early Bronze Age.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-oldest-native-americans-lake-baikal.html
5/28/2020 4:00 PMChildren of parents with a degree are almost a year of schooling ahead in maths by the age 11 than peers whose parents have just GCSEs, a new study by the University of Sussex has discovered.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-parents-degrees-children-significant-advantage.html
5/28/2020 6:00 PMEvery last particle in the universe — from a cosmic ray to a quark — is either a fermion or a boson. These categories divide the building blocks of nature into two distinct kingdoms. Now researchers have discovered the first examples of a third particle kingdom.https://www.quantamagazine.org/milestone-evidence-for-anyons-a-third-kingdom-of-particles-20200512/
5/29/2020 8:00 AMA study by a team of researchers from Canada and Italy could usher in a revolutionary development in materials science, leading to big changes in the way companies create modern electronics.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-ground-d-materials.html
5/29/2020 10:00 AMIn our 13.8 billion-year-old universe, most galaxies like our Milky Way form gradually, reaching their large mass relatively late. But a new discovery made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) of a massive rotating disk galaxy, seen when the universe was only ten percent of its current age, challenges the traditional models of galaxy formation.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-alma-massive-rotating-disk-early.html
5/29/2020 12:00 PMIn 2018, Hawai’i’s Kīlauea volcano erupted dramatically in the spring and summer. Huge plumes of ash, smog, and lava bombs spurted from its fissures. Flowing lava permanently altered the surrounding landscape and destroyed more than 700 homes, Brigit Katz reported for Smithsonian magazine at the time. Things have cooled off since then and earlier this month, new satellite images from NASA show something else forming on Kīlauea’s summit: a huge, rust-colored lake filled with water, not lava.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nasa-photos-reveal-lake-kilauea-volcano-its-water-not-lava-180974915/
5/29/2020 2:00 PMCurrent methods for charging electronic devices via wireless technology only work if the overall system parameters are set up to match a specific transfer distance. As a result, these methods are limited to stationary power transfer applications, which means that a device that is receiving power needs to maintain a specific distance from the source supplying it in order for the power transfer to be successful.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-robust-efficient-wireless-power.html
5/29/2020 4:00 PMFrom the fixed past to the tangible present to the undecided future, it feels as though time flows inexorably on. But that is an illusion.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-s-passage-is-probably-an-illusion/
5/29/2020 6:00 PMThe pioneering astronomer and ‘mother of Hubble’ paved the way for revolutionary space observatories.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasa-renames-next-generation-telescope-after-nancy-grace-roman/
5/30/2020 8:00 AM520 light-years away from Earth, a baby planet is born. While thousands of exoplanets have been identified so far, researchers at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, or VLT, in Chile, have captured the birth of a planet for the very first time. Nestled in a thick disc of dust and gas surrounding a young star named AB Aurigae, a fiery spiral twists around the planet’s site of birth.https://www.popsci.com/story/science/baby-planet-born/
5/30/2020 10:00 AMAfter delays from the coronavirus pandemic, NASA has picked a date for its spacecraft to snatch up a chunk of space rock to bring home. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft mission is now expected to perform its first asteroid-sampling attempt to occur on Oct. 20. The procedure had previously been scheduled for August, but the mission team has decided to delay the maneuver because of limitations meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus-borne respiratory disease COVID-19.https://www.space.com/osiris-rex-asteroid-sample-collection-coronavirus-delay.html
5/30/2020 12:00 PMResearchers have crafted a device that replicates the shape of the eye’s sensory membrane.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-artificial-eye-mimics-a-retinas-natural-curve/
5/30/2020 2:00 PMAustralian scientists have for the first time produced a new generation of experimental solar energy cells that pass strict International Electrotechnical Commission testing standards for heat and humidity.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-05-next-generation-perovskite-solar-cells-strict.html
5/30/2020 4:00 PMPrey fish still do not recognize lionfish as a threat. But selection pressure from the invaders is making them shy.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/shyness-helps-parrotfish-survive-invasive-predators/
5/30/2020 6:00 PMResearchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used state-of-the-art atomic clocks, advanced light detectors, and a measurement tool called a frequency comb to boost the stability of microwave signals 100-fold. This marks a giant step toward better electronics to enable more accurate time dissemination, improved navigation, more reliable communications and higher-resolution imaging for radar and astronomy. Improving the microwave signal’s consistency over a specific time period helps ensure reliable operation of a device or system.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-scientists-boost-microwave-stability-hundredfold.html
5/31/2020 8:00 AMSince the outbreak of COVID-19, there’s been a worldwide shortage of face masks—particularly, the N95 ones worn by health care workers. Although these coverings provide the highest level of protection currently available, they have limitations. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Nano have developed a membrane that can be attached to a regular N95 mask and replaced when needed. The filter has a smaller pore size than normal N95 masks, potentially blocking more virus particles.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-efficient-filter-n95-masks.html
5/31/2020 10:00 AMCatmint, also known as catnip, is well-known for its intoxicating effect on cats. The chemical responsible for the cats’ strange behavior is nepetalactone, a volatile iridoid produced by catmint. An international team of researchers has now found through genome analysis that the ability to produce iridoids had already been lost in ancestors of catmint in the course of evolution. Hence, nepetalactone biosynthesis is the result of repeated evolution. Nevertheless, this particular iridoid differs considerably from other compounds in this group of natural products with regards to its chemical structure and properties, and most likely its ecological functions.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-mint-catmint.html
5/31/2020 12:00 PMThe behavior could be an evolutionary adaptation that lets bees forage more easily.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bumblebees-bite-plants-to-force-them-to-flower-seriously/
5/31/2020 2:00 PMXu Yi, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Virginia, collaborated with Yun-Feng Xiao’s group from Peking University and researchers at Caltech to achieve the broadest recorded spectral span in a microcomb.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-broadest-microcomb-spectral-span.html
5/31/2020 4:00 PMThe giant tectonic plate under the Indian Ocean is going through a rocky breakup … with itself. In a short time (geologically speaking) this plate will split in two, a new study finds.https://www.livescience.com/india-australia-plate-tectonics-break.html
5/31/2020 6:00 PMResearchers found COVID-19 infection produces a strong T cell response. Here’s why they say that is good news.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/early-coronavirus-immunity-data-fuel-promise-for-a-vaccine/
6/1/2020 8:00 AMResearchers recently discovered extremely well-preserved footprints on the ceiling of the Castelbouc cave in Lozère, France. Finger, claw and even pads marks can be seen in these giant footprints which measure over 4 feet and which belonged to… dinosaurs. They date from 166 to 168 million years ago, which corresponds to the Middle Jurassic period.https://www.gentside.co.uk/dinosaur/giant-dinosaur-footprints-discovered-on-the-ceiling-of-a-cave-in-france_art5504.html
6/1/2020 10:00 AMT10
6/1/2020 12:00 PMArchaeologists have found the bones of about 60 mammoths at an airport under construction just north of Mexico City, near human-built ‘traps’ where more than a dozen mammoths were found last year.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-mexico-city-experts-bones-dozens.html
6/1/2020 2:00 PMThe genus Rafflesia is widely known for at least two reasons—its gigantic bloom and repulsive stench. One newly discovered member of the group is the smallest of its kind and gives off a fruity fragrance.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/gigantic-corpse-flower-s-tiny-relative-smells-like-coconuts/
6/1/2020 4:00 PMGiven the present-day rate of global sea-level rise, remaining marshes in the Mississippi Delta are likely to drown, according to a new Tulane University study.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-mississippi-delta-marshes-state-irreversible.html
6/1/2020 6:00 PMRhinos and buffalos are two African animals renowned for their size and aggression. Generally, they are indifferent to each other, but they can both be unpredictably aggressive when threatened. When a rhino and a buffalo go head-to-head, an earth-shaking encounter erupts…https://roaring.earth/rhino-vs-buffalo/
6/2/2020 8:00 AMA scientist at the University of Sydney has achieved what one quantum industry insider has described as “something that many researchers thought was impossible”. Dr. Benjamin Brown from the School of Physics has developed a type of error-correcting code for quantum computers that will free up more hardware to do useful calculations.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-quantum-physicist-code.html
6/2/2020 10:00 AMT10
6/2/2020 12:00 PMResearchers, including those at the Natural History Museum in London, have discovered a new species of seaweed Calidia pseudolobata as well as four new genera of red algae from the warm waters of China. The research suggests there are many new species yet to be discovered—with potential implications for marine biodiversity and food security.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-species-seaweed-algae.html
6/2/2020 2:00 PMThe Greenland shark is an old, misunderstood late-bloomer. You might be inclined to feel sorry for it—but this vertebrate lives a long, slow-going life. A team of researchers led by Julius Nielsen of the University of Copenhagen has determined that it can live to at least 272 (possibly up to 500) years old. (article from 2016)https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/greenland-shark-is-officially-the-longest-living-vertebrate-on-earth/
6/2/2020 4:00 PMJust how deep does the ocean go? Way further than you think. This animation puts the actual distance into perspective, showing a vast distance between the waves we see and the mysterious point we call Challenger Deep. (article from 2017)https://www.businessinsider.com/ocean-floor-much-deeper-humans-understand-animation-2017-3
6/2/2020 6:00 PMIn the summer of 2018, at a conference on low-dimensional topology and geometry, Lisa Piccirillo heard about a nice little math problem. It seemed like a good testing ground for some techniques she had been developing as a graduate student at the University of Texas, Austin. Her solution to the Conway knot problem helped her land a tenure-track position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.https://www.quantamagazine.org/graduate-student-solves-decades-old-conway-knot-problem-20200519/
6/3/2020 8:00 AMNASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the ground-based Gemini Observatory in Hawaii have teamed up with the Juno spacecraft to probe the mightiest storms in the solar system, taking place more than 500 million miles away on the giant planet Jupiter.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/telescopes-and-spacecraft-join-forces-to-probe-deep-into-jupiters-atmosphere
6/3/2020 10:00 AMT10
6/3/2020 12:00 PMThe prehistoric fish Titanichthys fed by swimming through water slowly with its mouth open wide to capture high concentrations of plankton, researchers report.https://www.futurity.org/titanichthys-fish-jaw-eating-2371432/
6/3/2020 2:00 PMGigantic one-horned beasts once roamed the frozen steppes and tundra of Siberia. They were a species of rhino, more than two meters at the shoulder who grazed these areas in huge numbers during the last Ice Age. That is, until their extinction.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/where-did-the-siberian-unicorn-disappear/
6/3/2020 4:00 PMAfter receiving more than 100 applications, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California has selected eight U.S. manufacturers to make a new ventilator tailored for coronavirus (COVID-19) patients.https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/eight-us-manufacturers-selected-to-make-nasa-covid-19-ventilator
6/3/2020 6:00 PMThe formation of the Sun, the Solar System and the subsequent emergence of life on Earth may be a consequence of a collision between our galaxy, the Milky Way, and a smaller galaxy called Sagittarius, discovered in the 1990s to be orbiting our galactic home.http://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Gaia/Galactic_crash_may_have_triggered_Solar_System_formation
6/4/2020 8:00 AMAs the children’s book Everyone Poos has taught us, creatures of all shapes and sizes create an array of poops, and they are all natural and okay. Well, maybe except for the wombat’s poop; something weird is going on there. The Australian marsupial pushes out little piles of cube-shaped poos, and naturalists and biologists have wondered for years how the round sinuous plumbing found in most animals could produce an end product that looks like it came from a brick factory.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-wombats-make-cube-shaped-poos-180970847/
6/4/2020 10:00 AMT10
6/4/2020 12:00 PMScientists from the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) developed an experimental diagnostic test for COVID-19 that can visually detect the presence of the virus in 10 minutes. It uses a simple assay containing plasmonic gold nanoparticles to detect a color change when the virus is present. The test does not require the use of any advanced laboratory techniques, such as those commonly used to amplify DNA, for analysis.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-experimental-rapid-covid-nanoparticle-technique.html
6/4/2020 2:00 PMAs embryos develop, tissues flow and reorganize dramatically on timescales as brief as minutes. This reorganization includes epithelial tissues that cover outer surfaces and inner linings of organs and blood vessels. As the embryo develops, these tissues often narrow along one axis and extend along a perpendicular axis through cellular movement caused by external or internal forces acting differently along various directions in the tissue (anisotropies). Researchers have long wondered how simple clusters of cells inside developing embryos transform into tissues and organs—how do tissues physically change shape in the embryo? Might they turn from “solids” into “fluids” at specific times in development to make it easier to rapidly sculpt functional tissues and organs?https://phys.org/news/2020-05-view-tissues-embryo.html
6/4/2020 4:00 PMA team of scientists studying the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that has caused the COVID-19 pandemic, found that it was especially well-suited to jump from animals to humans by shapeshifting as it gained the ability to infect human cells.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-evolution-pandemic-coronavirus-outlines-path.html
6/4/2020 6:00 PMA Bristol academic has achieved a milestone in statistical/mathematical physics by solving a 100-year-old physics problem—the discrete diffusion equation in finite space.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-solution-century-old-math-problem-transmission.html
6/5/2020 8:00 AMSurgery would be inconceivable without general anesthesia, so it may come as a surprise that despite its 175-year history of medical use, doctors and scientists have been unable to explain how anesthetics temporarily render patients unconscious.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-anesthesia-effect-consciousness-century-old-scientific.html
6/5/2020 10:00 AMT10
6/5/2020 12:00 PMWarming events are increasing in magnitude and severity, threatening many ecosystems worldwide. As the global temperatures continue to climb, it also raises uncertainties as to the relationship, prevalence, and spread of parasites and disease.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-tide-marine-disease-parasites-world.html
6/5/2020 2:00 PMAt the atomic level, a glass of water and a spoonful of crystalline salt couldn’t look more different. Water atoms move around freely and randomly, while salt crystals are locked in place in a lattice. But some new materials, recently investigated by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, show an intriguing propensity to sometimes behave like water and sometimes like salt, giving them interesting transport properties and holding potential promise for applications like mixing and delivery in the pharmaceutical industry.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-material-microscopic-particles.html
6/5/2020 4:00 PMA few minutes into the life of the universe, colliding emissions of light energy created the first particles of matter and antimatter. We are familiar with the reverse process—matter generating energy—in everything from a campfire to an atomic bomb, but it has been difficult to recreate that critical transformation of light into matter.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-high-power-laser-simulations.html
6/5/2020 6:00 PMRochester Institute of Technology scientists have developed a method they believe will help epidemiologists more efficiently predict the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their new study outlines a solution to the SIR epidemic model, which is commonly used to predict how many people are susceptible to, infected by, and recovered from viral epidemics.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-scientists-method-epidemiologists-covid-.html
6/6/2020 8:00 AMActive galactic nuclei (AGNs) play a major role in galaxy evolution. Astronomers from SRON and RuG have now used a record-setting sample of galaxies to confirm that galaxy mergers have a positive effect on igniting AGNs. They were able to compile about 10 times more pictures of merging galaxies than previous studies by using a machine-learning algorithm.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-mergers-galaxies-trigger-core.html
6/6/2020 10:00 AMT10
6/6/2020 12:00 PMThe Neolithic lifestyle, including farming, animal domestication and the development of new technologies, emerged in the Near East around 12,000 years ago and contributed profoundly to the modern way of life. The Neolithic spread rapidly across Europe, mainly along the Danube valley and the Mediterranean coastline, reaching the Atlantic coast around 5000-4500 BCE. The existing archaeogenetic data from prehistoric European farmers indicates that the spread of farming is due to expanding populations of early farmers who mixed little, if at all, with indigenous hunter-gatherer groups. However, until now, no archaeogenetic data were available for France.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-heightened-interaction-neolithic-migrants-hunter-gatherers.html
6/6/2020 2:00 PMAdvances in neuroscience research and microscopy: a collaborative project driven by researchers of the Max Perutz Labs Vienna, a joint venture of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna, and the TU Wien (Vienna) allows researchers to look deep into organs and nervous systems of animals, ranging from squids and worms to fish and salamanders.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-deep-animals.html
6/6/2020 4:00 PMRecently discovered ‘single-pixel vision’ in fish could help researchers understand how humans are able to spot tiny details in their environment—like stars in the sky.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-pixel-vision-fish-scientists-humans.html
6/6/2020 6:00 PMOrcas are well-known hunters that rule the ocean as untouchable apex predators. Hunting in groups called “pods” to take down prey, they’ve often been called the “wolves of the sea.” From sea lions to sharks, there are few animals these ingenious hunters can’t nab when they work together.https://roaring.earth/killer-whales-hunt-seals/
6/7/2020 8:00 AMESA’s Solar Orbiter will cross through the tails of Comet ATLAS during the next few days. Although the recently launched spacecraft was not due to be taking science data at this time, mission experts have worked to ensure that the four most relevant instruments will be switched on during the unique encounter.https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Solar_Orbiter/Solar_Orbiter_to_pass_through_the_tails_of_Comet_ATLAS
6/7/2020 10:00 AMT10
6/7/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.quantamagazine.org/black-hole-paradoxes-reveal-a-fundamental-link-between-energy-and-order-20200528/
6/7/2020 2:00 PMA German power firm will launch demonstrations of a one-of-a-kind, triple-threat power generating platform off Iraklio, Greece, later this year.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-05-german-firm-game-changing-solar-wind-wave-energy.html
6/7/2020 4:00 PMThe giant extinct invertebrate Arthropleura resembled some modern millipedes, but could grow to be more than one-and-a-half feet wide, and may sometimes have been more than six feet long.http://www.geologyin.com/2020/05/largest-land-dwelling-bug-of-all-time.html
6/7/2020 6:00 PMAn analysis of more than 200,000 spiral galaxies has revealed unexpected links between spin directions of galaxies, and the structure formed by these links might suggest that the early universe could have been spinning, according to a Kansas State University study.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-patterns-spiral-galaxies-universe.html
6/8/2020 8:00 AMThe giant tectonic plate under the Indian Ocean is going through a rocky breakup … with itself. In a short time (geologically speaking) this plate will split in two, a new study finds.https://www.livescience.com/india-australia-plate-tectonics-break.html
6/8/2020 10:00 AMT10
6/8/2020 12:00 PMResearchers from NOAA and the University of Colorado have devised a breakthrough method for estimating national emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels using ambient air samples and a well-known isotope of carbon that scientists have relied on for decades to date archaeological sites.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-tracking-fossil-fuel-emissions-carbon-.html
6/8/2020 2:00 PMThe Cambrian is remembered as a time when there was nothing on land and all life existed in the oceans. Gone were the days of simple one-celled organisms for an evolutionary explosion had just occurred and animal life had mushroomed into hundreds of new forms. It was a time of change, when the seas were ruled by creatures seemingly straight out of science fiction.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/the-alien-world-of-the-burgess-shale/
6/8/2020 4:00 PMEver since a British officer in 1903 captured what is believed to be the first image of Mount Everest, photographers have been striving to take iconic pictures of the world’s highest mountain. Everest’s enormity makes it nearly impossible to make a single photograph that highlights both its scale and position within the Himalayan landscape.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/2019/06/mount-everest-aerial-north-side-drone-photography/
6/8/2020 6:00 PMDinosaur fossils aren’t minerals under state law, a divided Montana Supreme Court said in a ruling Wednesday that has implications in an ongoing legal battle over the ownership of millions of dollars of fossils unearthed on an eastern Montana ranch.https://apnews.com/57a2a2b1d46f3588df439dc12b8e22ba
6/9/2020 8:00 AMStreams of gas fall to their dooms, plunging into black holes, locked away from the universe forever. In their final moments, these gassy shreds send out one last flare of light, some of the brightest emissions in the universe.https://www.space.com/how-close-to-black-holes-isco.html
6/9/2020 10:00 AMT10
6/9/2020 12:00 PMA genetic variant that raises one’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease may also make people more susceptible to COVID-19.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-genetic-risk-factors-alzheimers-disease
6/9/2020 2:00 PMColorado State University Distinguished Professor Sonia Kreidenweis and her research group identified an atmospheric region unchanged by human-related activities in the first study to measure bioaerosol composition of the Southern Ocean south of 40 degrees south latitude.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-atmospheric-scientists-cleanest-air-earth.html
6/9/2020 4:00 PMA few minutes into the life of the universe, colliding emissions of light energy created the first particles of matter and antimatter. We are familiar with the reverse process—matter generating energy—in everything from a campfire to an atomic bomb, but it has been difficult to recreate that critical transformation of light into matter.https://phys.org/news/2020-05-high-power-laser-simulations.html
6/9/2020 6:00 PMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr0on1Ij7JU
6/10/2020 8:00 AMA Finnish research group has found strong evidence for the presence of exotic quark matter inside the cores of the largest neutron stars in existence. They reached this conclusion by combining recent results from theoretical particle and nuclear physics to measurements of gravitational waves from neutron star collisions.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-neutron-stars.html
6/10/2020 10:00 AMT10
6/10/2020 12:00 PMAbout 3.5 million years ago, the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy unleashed an enormous burst of energy. Our primitive ancestors, already afoot on the African plains, likely would have witnessed this flare as a ghostly glow high overhead in the constellation Sagittarius. It might have persisted for 1 million years.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-intense-milky-black-hole-illuminated.html
6/10/2020 2:00 PMBald eagles are excellent fishers, able to adeptly dive into the water and grab fish near the surface with their powerful talons, which are designed perfectly for clasping onto prey. However, sometimes the eagle will bite off more than it can chew.https://roaring.earth/bald-eagle-vs-octopus-saving-an-eagle-from-an-octopus/
6/10/2020 4:00 PMIf only there was a way to see where everything in the Solar System is… Try NASA’s handy-dandy Solar System Exploration tool that lets you see where every planet, moon, and asteroid is right now.https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/our-solar-system/overview/
6/10/2020 6:00 PMAncient humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans were genetically closer than polar bears and brown bears, and so, like the bears, were able to easily produce healthy, fertile hybrids according to a study, led by the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-humans-neanderthals-polar-brown.html
6/11/2020 8:00 AMNASA is flexing its supercomputing muscle to help crack some of the most pressing questions surrounding COVID-19, from basic science on how the virus interacts with cells in the human body to genetic risk factors to screening for potential therapeutic drugs.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/esd/2020/nasa-supercomputers-power-covid-19-research
6/11/2020 10:00 AMhttps://techxplore.com/news/2020-06-hydrogen-cars-wont-electric-vehicles.html
6/11/2020 12:00 PMThroughout Earth’s long history, volcanic super-eruptions have been some of the most extreme events ever to affect our planet’s rugged surface. Surprisingly, even though these explosions eject enormous volumes of material—at least 1,000 times more than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens—and have the potential to alter the planet’s climate, relatively few have been documented in the geologic record.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-discovery-ancient-super-eruptions-yellowstone-hotspot.html
6/11/2020 2:00 PMScientists have tried to develop synthetic red blood cells that mimic the favorable properties of natural ones, such as flexibility, oxygen transport and long circulation times. But so far, most artificial red blood cells have had one or a few, but not all, key features of the natural versions. Now, researchers have made synthetic red blood cells that have all of the cells’ natural abilities, plus a few new ones.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-synthetic-red-blood-cells-mimic.html
6/11/2020 4:00 PMAmazing footage captures the war waged between two colonies of giant killer hornets.https://roaring.earth/two-giant-killer-hornet-colonies-fight-to-the-death-video/
6/11/2020 6:00 PMObservations from Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) indicate that the magnetic field near our galaxy’s core is strong enough to control the material moving around the black hole, even in the presence of the black hole’s enormous gravitational forces.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-magnetic-fields-perspective-milky-black.html
6/12/2020 8:00 AMNew results from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope suggest the formation of the first stars and galaxies in the early Universe took place sooner than previously thought. A European team of astronomers have found no evidence of the first generation of stars, known as Population III stars, as far back as when the Universe was just 500 million years old.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-hubble-early-universe.html
6/12/2020 10:00 AMAstronomers announced the discovery of a ghostly, almost perfectly circular, arc of ultraviolet emission centered on the handle of the Big Dipper and stretching 30 degrees across the Northern sky. If the arc were extended, it would completely encircle the Big Dipper with a diameter of 60 degrees.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-astronomers-degree-arc-ultraviolet-emission.html
6/12/2020 12:00 PMLast year, while combing through NASA’s archives, two planetary scientists noticed something earlier analyses had overlooked—a blip in Uranus’s magnetic field as Voyager 2 cruised through a magnetic bubble of sorts. The new result, which appeared last summer in Geophysical Research Letters, comes as planetary scientists start to shift their focus to some of the field’s deepest outstanding mysteries.https://www.popsci.com/story/space/giant-belch-from-uranus/
6/12/2020 2:00 PMThe first Arab space mission to Mars is preparing to lift off within weeks. Fuelling is due to begin next week. It will take seven months to travel the 493 million km (308 million miles) to reach Mars and begin its orbit, sending back ground-breaking new data about its climate and atmosphere. The probe will remain orbiting Mars for an entire Martian year, 687 days, to gather sufficient data.https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-52973849
6/12/2020 4:00 PMTo test the James Webb Space Telescope’s readiness for its journey in space, technicians successfully commanded it to deploy and extend a critical part of the observatory known as the Deployable Tower Assembly.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/tower-extension-test-a-success-for-nasa-s-james-webb-space-telescope
6/12/2020 6:00 PMHuman eggs use chemical signals to attract sperm. New research from Stockholm University and Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust shows that eggs use these chemical signals to choose sperm. Different women’s eggs attract different men’s sperm—and not necessarily their partner’s.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-human-eggs-men-sperm.html
6/13/2020 8:00 AMAs Americans took to the streets in protest and NASA astronauts took to the skies on a commercial spacecraft, some space fans had a question: “Can’t we just do space?” One space fan asked exactly the right person, NASA astronaut Victor Glover. Glover is a former naval aviator and a rookie astronaut scheduled to launch on SpaceX’s first operational crew launch later this summer. He’s also Black and has spent the past few days speaking candidly and kindly on Twitter about social justice.https://www.space.com/nasa-astronaut-victor-glover-social-justice-message.html
6/13/2020 10:00 AMDuring June and early July, it is eclipse season once again. In the coming weeks, there will be three eclipses that take place: one of the sun and two of the moon.https://www.space.com/eclipse-season-2020-has-begun.html
6/13/2020 12:00 PMHit the road with Emily Graslie in “Prehistoric Road Trip” as she travels across the western United States to examine our planet’s history. As Emily ventures across ancient landscapes, the fossils and experts she encounters along the way bring the now-extinct world to life.https://www.pbs.org/show/prehistoric-road-trip/
6/13/2020 2:00 PMBy tinkering with the genetics of human cells, a team of scientists gave them the ability to camouflage.https://futurism.com/gene-hack-human-cells-turn-invisible
6/13/2020 4:00 PMAnd now for a moment of pure awwwwww….https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1709254695912373&id=1085017588336090
6/13/2020 6:00 PMThe strange extinct avian rulers of New Caledonia named Sylviornis, were among the oddest large birds ever to exist. For a long time we puzzled about what they were, only to find out that were indeed real “giant chickens”.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/the-giant-chickens-of-new-caledonia/
6/14/2020 8:00 AMAsteroids don’t just sit there doing nothing as they orbit the Sun. They get bombarded by meteoroids, blasted by space radiation, and now, for the first time, scientists are seeing evidence that even a little sunshine can wear them down.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/sunlight-cracks-rocks-on-bennu
6/14/2020 10:00 AMESA and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs have selected a team from Mahidol University, Thailand to carry out research using ESA’s hypergravity-generating Large Diameter Centrifuge. The team will see how watermeal – the smallest flowering plant on Earth, even smaller than the more familiar duckweed – responds to changing gravity levels to assess its usefulness for space-based life support systems.http://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Technology/Thailand_team_wins_UN_access_to_ESA_s_hypergravity_centrifuge
6/14/2020 12:00 PMThe first confirmed heartbeat of a supermassive black hole is still going strong more than ten years after first being observed. X-ray satellite observations spotted the repeated beat after its signal had been blocked by our Sun for a number of years.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-black-hole-heart.html
6/14/2020 2:00 PMA meteor lit up the night sky over Tennessee and neighboring states late Sunday (June 7), sparking 120 fireball sightings across 12 different states and Canada.https://www.space.com/meteor-fireball-video-tennessee-june-2020.html
6/14/2020 4:00 PMNASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has taken its closest look yet at a potential sample site on asteroid Bennu.https://www.space.com/asteroid-bennu-sample-site-nasa-osiris-rex-close-pass.html
6/14/2020 6:00 PMNASA has awarded Northrop Grumman $187 million to design the habitat module for the space agency’s lunar Gateway, a planned moon-orbiting space station for astronauts.https://www.space.com/nasa-lunar-gateway-habitat-module-contract.html
6/15/2020 8:00 AMAccording to new research by SISSA, ICTP and INFN, black holes could be like holograms, in which all the information to produce a three-dimensional image is encoded in a two-dimensional surface. As affirmed by quantum theories, black holes could be incredibly complex, and concentrate an enormous amount of information in two dimensions, like the largest hard disks that exist in nature. This idea aligns with Einstein’s theory of relativity, which describes black holes as three dimensional, simple, spherical and smooth, as depicted in the first-ever image of a black hole that circulated in 2019. In short, black holes appear to be three dimensional, just like hologramshttps://phys.org/news/2020-06-black-holes-hologram.html
6/15/2020 10:00 AMhttps://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/ancient-dna-rewrites-dead-sea-scroll-history/
6/15/2020 12:00 PMA new research paper co-authored by a Virginia Tech assistant professor of physics provides a new explanation for two recent strange events that occurred in Antarctica—high-energy neutrinos appearing to come up out of the Earth on their own accord and head skyward.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-explanation-neutrino-anomalies-antarctica.html
6/15/2020 2:00 PMAstronomers have discovered an activity cycle in another fast radio burst, potentially unearthing a significant clue about these mysterious deep-space phenomena.https://www.space.com/mysterious-fast-radio-burst-repeater.html
6/15/2020 4:00 PMDecades of measurements and calculations have revealed that Titan’s orbit around Saturn is expanding—meaning, the moon is getting farther and farther away from the planet—at a rate about 100 times faster than expected.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-titan-migrating-saturn-faster-previously.html
6/15/2020 6:00 PMOf the advanced propulsion concepts that could theoretically make interstellar space travel possible, few have generated as much excitement—and controversy—as the EmDrive. First described nearly two decades ago, the EmDrive works by converting electricity into microwaves and channeling this electromagnetic radiation through a conical chamber. In theory, the microwaves can exert force against the walls of the chamber to produce enough thrust to propel a spacecraft once it’s in space. At this point, however, the EmDrive exists only as a laboratory prototype, and it’s still unclear whether it’s able to produce thrust at all. If it does, the forces it generates aren’t strong enough to be registered by the naked eye, much less propel a spacecraft.https://www.wired.com/story/a-mythical-form-of-space-propulsion-finally-gets-a-real-test/
6/16/2020 8:00 AMA decades-old idea from lunar scientist Richard Vondrak, who worked at the Apollo Science Operations Center during the moon landing program, proposed using lunar craters to build radio telescopes like the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/the-history-and-future-of-telescopes-on-the-moon
6/16/2020 10:00 AMExperts from the University of Nottingham have discovered that some chimpanzees have a bone in their heart, which could be vital in managing their health and conservation.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-rare-heart-bone-chimpanzees.html
6/16/2020 12:00 PMA prehistoric “Icebird” has been found in Siberian permafrost in remarkably good shape. The freezing temperatures in parts of Russia, particularly Siberia, may be tough for most folks to cope with, especially during the long winter months. But for scientists, the region can provide tremendous learning opportunities, because the permafrost often captures, and preserves, animal and bird specimens that the cold keeps largely unchanged from their original forms for. That enables scientists and researchers to discover a great deal about these species, as they arrive in labs almost identical to the way they looked thousands of years ago.https://www.thevintagenews.com/2020/02/25/icebird/
6/16/2020 2:00 PMOn April 21, 1972, Apollo 16 became the fifth mission to land on the Moon. One of the most exciting things they brought with them was the Lunar Roving Vehicle. A few years ago NASA released footage of the astronauts driving in the rover along the lunar surface.https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-video-apollo-16-lunar-rover-drive-on-moon-2017-11
6/16/2020 4:00 PMNew thermal imagery paints the Mars moon Phobos in a candy-colored light. NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft, which has been orbiting the Red Planet since 2001, used its infrared camera to measure temperature variations on the 16-mile-wide (25 kilometers) Phobos at three different stages of illumination.https://www.space.com/mars-moon-phobos-nasa-thermal-images.html
6/16/2020 6:00 PMThese dragons, clad with armors of spine-like projections, can produce hydrogen cyanide to repel unwanted intruders.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/the-many-legged-cave-dragons-of-china/
6/17/2020 8:00 AMMeet the frogmouth, a group of birds with an oddly amphibian resemblance. Frogmouths are nocturnal birds that you might mistake for owls at first glance; however, they’re most closely related to nightjars. These unique-looking birds sport wide, frog-like gapes and are found throughout the forests of India, Southeast Asia, and Australia.https://roaring.earth/these-birds-look-oddly-frog-like/
6/17/2020 10:00 AMAs soon as the blue calamintha bee arrived on the scene, scientists worried it might be gone for good. The indigo insect was last spotted in central Florida in 2016, five years after it was first identified. But this spring, just as Americans began to hunker down because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rare blue bees, known scientifically as Osmia calaminthae, were rediscovered in the same region foraging on Ashe’s calamint, a dainty violet flower that blooms in certain scrub habitats.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/blue-bee-feared-be-extinct-found-florida-180974957/
6/17/2020 12:00 PMMIT engineers have designed a “brain-on-a-chip,” smaller than a piece of confetti, that is made from tens of thousands of artificial brain synapses known as memristors—silicon-based components that mimic the information-transmitting synapses in the human brain.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-tens-thousands-artificial-brain-synapses.html
6/17/2020 2:00 PMThe end of the Devonian period, 359 million years ago, was an eventful time: Fish were inching out of the ocean, and fernlike forests were advancing on land. The world was recovering from a mass extinction 12 million years earlier, but the climate was still chaotic, swinging between hothouse conditions and freezes so deep that glaciers formed in the tropics. And then, just as the planet was warming from one of these ice ages, another extinction struck, seemingly without reason. Now, spores from fernlike plants, preserved in ancient lake sediments from eastern Greenland, suggest a culprit: The planet’s protective ozone layer was suddenly stripped away, exposing surface life to a blast of mutation-causing ultraviolet (UV) radiation.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/no-asteroids-or-volcanoes-needed-ancient-mass-extinction-tied-ozone-loss-warming
6/17/2020 4:00 PMWhen the Sun is well overhead, the floor of the Mare Tranquillitatis pit is illuminated. With an incidence angle of 26.5° and a shadow of 55 meters, scientists can estimate the depth to be a bit over 100 meters. That estimate is from the edge of the shadow, which begins a slightly downslope from the gradual margin of the pits. When measured from the level of the surrounding mare plain, the depth of the pit is even greater. Compare this depth to the width, which ranges from 100 to 115 meters across the sharp precipice.http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/posts/230
6/17/2020 6:00 PMThe Caribbean, which today includes a diverse mix of human cultures, was one of the last places in the Americas occupied by people. Yet researchers don’t know precisely where these early migrants came from when they arrived somewhere between 8000 and 5000 years ago. Now, ancient DNA suggests the deep history of the Caribbean includes complex tales of migration and mingling, including how descendants of the first waves of inhabitants interacted with newcomers who arrived beginning 2800 years ago.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/ancient-dna-reveals-diverse-origins-caribbean-s-earliest-inhabitants
6/18/2020 8:00 AMhttps://www.facebook.com/DailyScienceDose/photos/a.443948115694965/3041373949285689/
6/18/2020 10:00 AMFresh ferns, loaded with spores, lightly dusted with leaves and twigs and perfectly seasoned with locally sourced charcoal. Sound good? It did to an ankylosaur about 110 million years ago, as evidenced by amazingly complete fossils of what was certainly the tank-like dinosaur’s last meal.https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/national-news/fermenting-ferns-rare-dinosaur-stomach-fossil-opens-door-to-ancient-world-2404876
6/18/2020 12:00 PMYou’ve never seen amphibians in this light before. Like, literally, this specific azure light. Today in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers for the first time show that amphibians glow if you throw blue light on them. The tiger salamander suddenly pops with brilliant green spots. Cranwell’s horned frog is striped in a nuclear glow. Even the marbled salamander’s tiny toe bones fluoresce brightly—oh, and as does its cloaca, perhaps as a kind of sexual display.https://www.wired.com/story/amphibians-glow/
6/18/2020 2:00 PMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-P5IFTqB98
6/18/2020 4:00 PMA pair of space freighters from Russia and Japan docked to the International Space Station are got some attention the other day as the Expedition 63 crew worked on a variety of space experiments.https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2020/06/09/space-bubbles-advanced-optics-benefiting-earthlings-astronauts/
6/18/2020 6:00 PMAn international collaboration of scientists has recorded the most accurate confirmation to date for one of the cornerstones of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, ‘the universality of free fall.”https://phys.org/news/2020-06-astrophysicists-cornerstone-einstein-theory-relativity.html
6/19/2020 8:00 AMResearchers at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Soft Materials Research Center (SMRC) have discovered an elusive phase of matter, first proposed more than 100 years ago and sought after ever since.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-century-scientists-liquid-phase.html
6/19/2020 10:00 AMScientists have discovered a distant exoplanet that closely resembles the Earth, orbiting a star that resembles our Sun — almost, they say, as though they were looking in a mirror at our own solar system.https://futurism.com/the-byte/astronomers-discover-mirror-image-solar-system
6/19/2020 12:00 PMhttps://videos.space.com/m/aCgMcEEs/see-boeing-starliners-control-panel-in-virtual-reality
6/19/2020 2:00 PMFrom 500 million miles away from Earth and while traveling at 127,000 mph, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has done it again.https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2020/06/11/nasas-spacecraft-at-jupiter-just-sent-back-some-jaw-dropping-photos/
6/19/2020 4:00 PMPhysicists set a new record by linking together a hot soup of 15 trillion atoms in a bizarre phenomenon called quantum entanglement. The finding could be a major breakthrough for creating more accurate sensors to detect ripples in space-time called gravitational waves or even the elusive dark matter thought to pervade the universe.https://www.space.com/physicists-entangle-15-trillion-hot-atoms.html
6/19/2020 6:00 PMAn international team of astronomers has discovered a potentially habitable exoplanet which is more similar to Earth in size and orbit than any planet found before. Dubbed KOI-456.04, the planet is located just over 3,000 light-years away from the solar system orbiting its parent star, named Kepler-160, close enough there could even be liquid water on the planet’s surface.https://www.cosmosup.com/astronomers-find-the-most-earth-like-planet-orbiting-a-sun-like-star/
6/20/2020 8:00 AMOn October 11, 1984, geologist Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first U.S. woman to take a walk in space, spending more than three hours outside the Challenger shuttle in Earth’s orbit. On June 8, 2020, the now 68-year-old former NASA astronaut and three-time veteran of flights on the Space Shuttle set another record. Together with retired naval officer, successful investor, and undersea explorer Victor Lance Vescovo (born 1966), she became the first woman (and 8th person in history) to reach the deepest point on Earth’s surface, the 10,984 meters deep Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean.https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbressan/2020/06/09/geologist-and-former-nasa-astronaut-becomes-first-woman-to-reach-earths-deepest-point/
6/20/2020 10:00 AMFor the first time, scientists have found that a bizarre subatomic “quasiparticle,” called a skyrmion, that’s capable of reproducing itself in an unusual way.https://futurism.com/the-byte/bizarre-subatomic-quasiparticle-splits-like-living-cell
6/20/2020 12:00 PMUniversity of Maryland geophysicists analyzed thousands of recordings of seismic waves, sound waves traveling through the Earth, to identify echoes from the boundary between Earth’s molten core and the solid mantle layer above it. The echoes revealed more widespread, heterogenous structures—areas of unusually dense, hot rock—at the core-mantle boundary than previously known.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-scientists-unexpected-widespread-earth-core.html
6/20/2020 2:00 PMNASA and ULA are now targeting Monday, July 20, for launch of the Mars 2020 mission of the Perseverance Rover on an Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/timeline/launch/status/
6/20/2020 4:00 PMNASA’s small but high-profile planetary defense program has overcome disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic to continue searching for potentially hazardous near Earth objects.https://spacenews.com/nasa-planetary-defense-efforts-continue-during-pandemic/
6/20/2020 6:00 PMAn international research team has been stunned to discover that some species of ancient crocodiles walked on their two hind legs like dinosaurs and measured over three meters in length.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-ancient-crocodiles-legs-dinosaurs.html
6/21/2020 8:00 AMFireflies known as snappy syncs (Photuris frontalis) illuminate the bottomlands of Congaree National Park in May each year, creating an astonishing pulsing display with their rapid-fire, coordinated flashes.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/06/synchronous-fireflies-rare-look-congaree-national-park/
6/21/2020 10:00 AMIt’s dead, it’s a –saur, it’s a dinosaur. Or is it? An extinct animal’s true identity is not always what it says on the tin. Without understanding the basic relationship between extinct reptiles, it’s easy to fall prey to the false impression their names bring.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/your-favorite-extinct-reptile-may-not-be-a-dinosaur/
6/21/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/insect-wings-evolved-legs-mayfly-genome-suggests
6/21/2020 2:00 PMThe deepest ever sighting of an octopus has been made by cameras on the Indian Ocean floor. The animal was spotted 7,000m down in the Java Trench – almost 2km deeper than the previous reliable recording.https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52839678
6/21/2020 4:00 PMSome of the world’s largest, most spectacular and unheralded mammals are silently slipping away, species like Tibetan wild yaks and Patagonia’s huemul, Bhutan’s takin and Vietnam’s saola. Even Africa’s three species of zebras and wildebeest have suffered massive reductions over the last several decades.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-scientists-lament-humpty-dumpty-effect.html
6/21/2020 6:00 PMAustralia’s most elusive bird, the Night Parrot, may not be much better at seeing in the dark than other parrots active during the day.https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-06/fu-man060420.php
6/22/2020 8:00 AMPreviously found only in deeper waters, one new species of zombie worm is found in the temperate, shallow waters off the coast of Spain. This finding expands current knowledge of the peculiar worms’ lifestyle and diversity.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/bone-eating-zombie-worms-discovered-in-mediterranean-waters/
6/22/2020 10:00 AMIn a world first, ECU researchers have discovered a plant that has successfully evolved to use ants—as well as native bees—as pollinating agents by overcoming their antimicrobial defenses.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-bees-ants.html
6/22/2020 12:00 PMAstronauts will get some next-gen training before they ride Boeing’s next-gen spacecraft. Crewmembers preparing to fly on Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner capsule will train using virtual reality (VR) headsets provided by Finland-based Varjo, both companies announced.https://www.space.com/boeing-starliner-capsule-virtual-reality-astronaut-training.html
6/22/2020 2:00 PMEven after decades of searching, scientists have never seen a particle of dark matter. Evidence for the substance’s existence is close to incontrovertible, but no one yet knows what it is made of. For decades physicists have hoped dark matter would prove to be heavy—consisting of so-called weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) that could be straightforwardly detected in the lab.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/direct-proof-of-dark-matter-may-lurk-at-low-energy-frontiers/
6/22/2020 4:00 PMWhat appears to be a hole in the sky is actually Barnard 68, a molecular cloud that lies about 500 light-years away in the constellation of Ophiuchus, the Serpent-holder.https://www.facebook.com/AstrophysicsAndAstronomy/posts/3156619641069853
6/22/2020 6:00 PMDetermined to find a needle in a cosmic haystack, a pair of astronomers time traveled through archives of old data from W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauankea in Hawaii and old X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to unlock a mystery surrounding a bright, lensed, heavily obscured quasar.https://scitechdaily.com/einstein-ring-astronomers-just-found-cosmic-golden-needle-that-was-buried-for-two-decades/
6/23/2020 8:00 AMMass burials are common remnants of the many plague outbreaks that ravaged Medieval Europe. A number of these graveyards are well documented in historical sources, but the locations of most, and the victims they contain, have been lost to the pages of time. In Vilnius, Lithuania, one such cemetery was found in a typical way: Accidental discovery during a routine city construction project.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-tropical-disease-medieval-europe-history.html
6/23/2020 10:00 AMEuropa is the second of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter, when counted outwards from the planet. First observed by Galileo Galilei in 1610, all four moons can be easily seen with a small telescope or binoculars. Europa is the smallest of the four, but still only slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon.https://www.facebook.com/AstrophysicsAndAstronomy/posts/3165179520213865
6/23/2020 12:00 PMSince their reintroduction to the Pacific coast in the 1970s, the sea otters’ rapid recovery and voracious appetite for tasty shellfish such as urchins, clams and crabs has brought them into conflict with coastal communities and fishers, who rely on the same valuable fisheries for food and income.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-recovery-sea-otter-populations-yields.html
6/23/2020 2:00 PMMore than 113 million years ago, a strange reptile lived in what is now South Korea. It strode around on two legs like many dinosaurs, yet it was not one of them. The tracks it left behind indicate it was a relative of today’s crocodiles. And the details of its Cretaceous footfalls resolve one mystery—but open another.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fossil-footprints-help-uncover-the-mysteries-of-bipedal-crocodiles/
6/23/2020 4:00 PMThe human eye is an incredibly complex piece of equipment, so it’s no wonder that we’ve had a hard time reverse engineering it. Now, researchers have unveiled the world’s first 3D artificial eye, which can not only outperform other devices but has the potential to see better than the real thing.https://newatlas.com/science/world-first-3d-bionic-eye/
6/23/2020 6:00 PMBose-Einstein condensates (BECs) — the existence of which was predicted by Albert Einstein and Indian mathematician Satyendra Nath Bose almost a century ago — are formed when atoms of certain elements are cooled to near absolute zero (0 Kelvin, minus 273.15 Celsius).https://www.ndtv.com/science/bose-einstein-quantum-fifth-state-of-matter-seen-for-1st-time-in-space-2244587
6/24/2020 8:00 AMFor the first time, a spacecraft has sent back pictures of the sky from so far away that some stars appear to be in different positions than we’d see from Earth.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-s-new-horizons-conducts-the-first-interstellar-parallax-experiment
6/24/2020 10:00 AMResearchers at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory based at Stanford University created an underwater sound so loud that it instantly vaporizes water and appears to set the threshold for how intense sound can be in water.https://www.cnet.com/news/stanford-scientists-created-a-sound-so-loud-it-instantly-boils-water/
6/24/2020 12:00 PMAstronauts have created “exotic matter” on board the International Space Station. The experiment used the microgravity of space to generate and study matter in ways that would not be possible on Earth. And the findings that result could change our understanding of physics at a fundamental level.https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/iss-nasa-exotic-matter-astronauts-cold-atom-lab-space-a9560116.html
6/24/2020 2:00 PMThe United States is going back to Mars, and the powerful Atlas V rocket that will launch NASA’s Perseverance rover to the red planet has been assembled for liftoff on July 20.https://www.ulalaunch.com/explore/blog-detail/blog/2020/06/11/mars-2020-atlas-v-stacked-for-continued-launch-preps
6/24/2020 4:00 PMContinuing on its path to preparation for next month’s launch, NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover spacecraft is, well, put together. Inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Backshell-Powered Descent Vehicle and Entry Vehicle assemblies are now attached to Perseverance. The cone-shaped backshell contains the parachute, and along with the mission’s heat shield, will provide protection for the rover and descent stage during entry into the Martian atmosphere.https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/timeline/launch/status/
6/24/2020 6:00 PMIf you rely on your GPS for directions, you can thank a mathematician whose little-known contributions to the mathematical modeling of the Earth recently earned her one of the U.S. Air Force’s highest honors: induction into the Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame! Dr. Gladys West, like the “human computers” at NASA who became famous with the book Hidden Figures, began her career by performing the complex hand calculations required before the computer age. However, her greatest accomplishment was the creation of an extremely detailed geodetic model of the Earth which became the foundation for the Global Positioning System.https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=22639
6/25/2020 8:00 AMBelow the ice-covered surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus hides a vast ocean. This sprawling ocean is likely 1 billion years old, which means it’s the perfect age to harbor life. (article from 2019)https://www.space.com/enceladus-billion-year-old-ocean.html
6/25/2020 10:00 AMA Pennsylvania-based space company called Astrobotic has taken on a dramatic new task for NASA: deliver a VIPER to the moon. Not a snake, of course. Astrobotic’s payload will be a large rover designed to sniff out water ice buried below the lunar surface, dubbed the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER. The launch, which is currently scheduled for late 2023, is a keystone piece of NASA’s Artemis program to land humans at the moon’s south pole in late 2024.https://www.space.com/astrobotic-will-land-nasa-viper-moon-rover.html
6/25/2020 12:00 PMThe brain continues to surprise us with its magnificent complexity. Groundbreaking research that combines neuroscience with math tells us that our brain creates neural structures with up to 11 dimensions when it processes information. By “dimensions,” they mean abstract mathematical spaces, not other physical realms. Still, the researchers “found a world that we had never imagined,” said Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, which made the discovery.https://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/our-brains-think-in-11-dimensions-discover-scientists
6/25/2020 2:00 PMEveryone wants to get off the planet Earth and go explore the solar system, without realizing just how good we’ve got it down here. We’ve got a lot of air, more liquid water than we know what to do with, a nice strong planetary magnetic field that protects us cosmic radiation, and nice strong gravity that keeps our muscles strong and our bones thick. All things considered, Earth is pretty nice.https://www.space.com/venus-runaway-greenhouse-effect-earth-next.html
6/25/2020 4:00 PMToday, stars fill the night sky. But when the universe was in its infancy, it contained no stars at all. And an international team of scientists is closer than ever to detecting, measuring and studying a signal from this era that has been traveling through the cosmos ever since that starless era ended some 13 billion years ago.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-scientists-billion-year-old-universe-dark-age.html
6/25/2020 6:00 PMA surprising new discovery has revealed a previously unknown structure located deep beneath the Pacific Ocean between the Earth’s core and mantle. It is not currently known what this structure – and others found near it – are composed of, but researchers note that their finding provides an opportunity to better understand the intricate processes that have allowed our planet to evolve and change over time.https://www.iflscience.com/environment/new-structures-detected-near-earths-core-using-seismic-wave-recordings/
6/26/2020 8:00 AMResearch from Curtin University has found that pre-historic climate change does not explain the extinction of megafauna in North America at the end of the last Ice Age. The research analysed ancient DNA from bone fragments and soil found inside Hall’s Cave, located in central Texas. The researchers discovered important genetic clues to the past biodiversity in North America and provided new insights into the causes of animal extinctions during the Ice Age.https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-06/cu-oth060220.php
6/26/2020 10:00 AMAs policymakers increasingly turn toward science in addressing global climate change, one Michigan State University scientist is looking to nature to develop the next generation of solar energy technology.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-nature-roadmap-potential-breakthroughs-solar.html
6/26/2020 12:00 PMOne of the best mothers in nature was not a devoted mammal or bird but rather a spineless, hard-shelled and somewhat spiky ancient arthropod that swam the oceans 430 million years ago. Nicknamed the “Kite Runner”, the odd beast held onto its young with thread-like bodily tendrils.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/extinct-sea-creature-s-fragile-babies-hung-on-by-a-thread/
6/26/2020 2:00 PMFor decades, scientists studying the muon have been puzzled by a strange pattern in the way muons rotate in magnetic fields, one that left physicists wondering if it can be explained by the Standard Model—the best tool physicists have to understand the universe.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-physicists-publish-worldwide-consensus-muon.html
6/26/2020 4:00 PMOur lungs, bones, blood vessels and other major organs are made up of cells, and one way our bodies keep us healthy is by using protein messengers known as ligands that bind to receptors on the surfaces of cells to regulate our biological processes. When those messages get garbled, it can make us ill with a host of different diseases.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-scientists-protein-cancer-regenerate-neurons.html
6/26/2020 6:00 PMhttps://www.nasa.gov/press-release/kathy-lueders-selected-to-lead-nasa-s-human-spaceflight-office
6/27/2020 8:00 AMNew research helps unravel how vast amounts of plastic particles travel—both regionally and globally—on the wind.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thousands-of-tons-of-microplastics-are-falling-from-the-sky/
6/27/2020 10:00 AMEgyptian Blue, also known as calcium copper silicate, is one of the first artificial pigments known to have been used by man. The oldest known example of the exquisite pigment is said to be about 5000 years old, found in a tomb painting dated to the reign of Ka-Sen, the last pharaoh of the First Dynasty. Others, however, state that the earliest evidence of the use of Egyptian blue is from the Fourth Dynasty and the Middle Kingdom, around 4,500 years ago. Nevertheless, by the New Kingdom, Egyptian Blue was used plentifully as a pigment in painting and can be found on statues, tomb paintings and sarcophagi. In addition, Egyptian blue was used to produce a ceramic glaze known as Egyptian faience.https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-technology/egyptian-blue-oldest-artificial-pigment-ever-produced-001745?
6/27/2020 12:00 PMFor more than 100 years, astronomers have been observing a curious star located some 190 light years away from Earth in the constellation Libra. It rapidly journeys across the sky at 800,000 mph (1.3 million kilometers per hour). But more interesting than that, HD 140283 — or Methuselah as it’s commonly known — is also one of the universe’s oldest known stars.https://www.space.com/how-can-a-star-be-older-than-the-universe.html
6/27/2020 2:00 PMIn the late winter of 1995, two middle-aged NASA scientists, David McKay and Everett Gibson, happened upon something peculiar in their Houston laboratory. They were using a scanning electron microscope to look at a sample of rock which allowed them to zoom in at over 100,000 times magnification. They were, in effect, flying over an alien landscape at an atomic level, searching out structures which were a hundred times narrower than a human hair.https://www.salon.com/2020/06/13/the-24-year-old-mystery-of-whether-a-martian-meteorite-harbored-microbial-life-is-still-unsolved/
6/27/2020 4:00 PMAll humans alive today can claim a common ancestral link to some hominin. Hominins include modern humans, extinct human species, and all our immediate ancestors. Recent discoveries of hominin remains, including the skull of a Homo erectus in South Africa, have generated high levels of interest from the public and scientific community alike. Fossils hold invaluable information about human history. But digging deeper, there is much complexity around the question of what a “fossil” is, and who should be granted ownership of them.https://theconversation.com/who-owns-the-bones-human-fossils-shouldnt-just-belong-to-whoever-digs-them-up-140060
6/27/2020 6:00 PMIs there anyone out there? This is an age-old question that researchers have now shed new light on with a study that calculates there could be more than 30 intelligent civilizations throughout our Galaxy. This is an enormous advance over previous estimates which spanned from zero to billions.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-intelligent-life-galaxy.html
6/28/2020 8:00 AMOne of nature’s rarest events has been caught on film: lightning in a volcano’s plume. Termed a “dirty thunderstorm,” this is a rare weather phenomenon that only occurs in very large volcanic eruptions. Though these “thunderstorms” are not fully understood, scientists suspect that electrical charges are generated when rock fragments and ash particles collide with one another to produce static charges.https://roaring.earth/volcanic-lightning/
6/28/2020 10:00 AMFor the first time, a spacecraft has sent back pictures of the sky from so far away that some stars appear to be in different positions than we’d see from Earth.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-s-new-horizons-conducts-the-first-interstellar-parallax-experiment
6/28/2020 12:00 PMWe need a bigger booster for the bold missions NASA’s Space Launch System rocket will give us the capability to achieve. This infographic sums up everything you need to know about the Space Launch System Solid Rocket Booster or SRB. The booster will use a 5-segment solid propellant motor, and the motor is the largest component of the booster.https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/multimedia/boosters_101.html
6/28/2020 2:00 PMA mysterious cloud containing radioactive ruthenium-106, which moved across Europe in autumn 2017, is still bothering Europe’s radiation protection entities. Although the activity concentrations were innocuous, they reached up to 100 times the levels of what had been detected over Europe in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident. Since no government had assumed responsibility, a military background could not be ruled out.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-radioactive-cloud-europe-civilian-background.html
6/28/2020 4:00 PMThe US Department of Energy (DOE) has delivered the nuclear power system for the Perseverance rover for NASA’s Mars 2020 mission which is due to launch next month. The Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG) was fuelled, built and tested by DOE’s national laboratories.https://www.facebook.com/groups/HumanSpaceflightSettlement/permalink/662003471198070/
6/28/2020 6:00 PMLater this year, if all goes well, the International Space Station will receive a very important delivery: a new and improved toilet system.https://www.space.com/new-toilet-coming-for-international-space-station-astronauts.html
6/29/2020 8:00 AMThe atmosphere of Mars has a distinct green glow, just like Earth’s. The European Space Agency’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) spotted an emerald glow in Mars’ wispy atmosphere, marking the first time the phenomenon has been spotted on a world beyond Earth, a new study reports.https://www.space.com/mars-atmosphere-green-glow-exomars-tgo.html
6/29/2020 10:00 AMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV7q9VrDgBo
6/29/2020 12:00 PMAn exotic physical phenomenon known as a Kohn anomaly has been found for the first time in an unexpected type of material by researchers at MIT and elsewhere. They say the finding could provide new insights into certain fundamental processes that help determine why metals and other materials display the complex electronic properties that underlie much of today’s technology.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-newly-phenomenon-quantum-devices.html
6/29/2020 2:00 PMESA’s Sun-exploring mission Solar Orbiter has made its first close approach to the star on June 15, getting as close as 77 million kilometres to its surface, about half the distance between the Sun and Earth.http://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Solar_Orbiter/Solar_Orbiter_makes_first_close_approach_to_the_Sun
6/29/2020 4:00 PMTo create large quantum networks, researchers will first need to develop efficient quantum repeaters. A key component of these repeaters are quantum memories, which are the quantum-mechanical equivalents of more conventional computer memories, such as random-access memories (RAM).https://phys.org/news/2020-06-quantum-memory-telecom-wavelengths.html
6/29/2020 6:00 PMFor the past few years, the possibility of a new (and big!) planet hanging around in the outermost regions of the solar system has tantalized scientists and the public alike. But after years of searching, astronomers have found zero new planets in that realm. Still… Is “Planet Nine” really out there, or not?https://www.space.com/does-planet-nine-exist.html
6/30/2020 8:00 AMA team of researchers led by Arizona State University (ASU) School of Earth and Space Exploration professor Lindy Elkins-Tanton has provided the first ever direct evidence that extensive coal burning in Siberia is a cause of the Permo-Triassic Extinction, the Earth’s most severe extinction event.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-coal-burning-siberia-climate-million-years.html
6/30/2020 10:00 AMIt’s almost Mars launch season again! Once every 26 months, as Earth runs on its inside track around the Sun, physics favors launches from our planet toward Mars. There are 3 Mars-bound missions that plan to launch in July, and 2 of them hope to land. (The one that won’t land is just named Hope.) NASA will be launching the Perseverance rover, and China its Tianwen-1 orbiter and rover. There was to have been a 3rd rover launching this summer, but the European Space Agency had to delay Rosalind Franklin and Kazachok’s mission until the next opportunity comes around in 2022.https://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/map-every-mars-landing-attempt.html
6/30/2020 12:00 PMThe temporary, and limited, reduction in emissions during the pandemic points to the need for larger structural changes.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carbon-levels-surge-again-as-countries-emerge-from-lockdown/
6/30/2020 2:00 PMAstronomers have revealed the gigantic atmosphere of the red supergiant star Antares in stunning, unprecedented detail. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile and the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, an international team of researchers has created the most detailed radio map yet of Antares’ atmosphere. In fact, this is the most detailed radio map ever created of any star other than our sun.https://www.space.com/supergiant-star-antares-map-atmosphere.html
6/30/2020 4:00 PMA perplexing Saturn moon mystery appears to be solved at long last. Strange bright patches observed in the southern tropical regions of Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan, more than a decade ago are likely the beds of dried-up hydrocarbon lakes and seas, a new study reports.https://www.space.com/saturn-moon-titan-bright-spots-mystery-solved.html
6/30/2020 6:00 PMA team of astronomers, including researchers at MIT, has picked up on a curious, repeating rhythm of fast radio bursts emanating from an unknown source outside our galaxy, 500 million light years away.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-astronomers-regular-rhythm-radio-unknown.html
7/1/2020 8:00 AMIn 2011, Chilean scientists discovered a mysterious fossil in Antarctica that looked like a deflated football. For nearly a decade, the specimen sat unlabeled and unstudied in the collections of Chile’s National Museum of Natural History, with scientists identifying it only by its sci-fi movie-inspired nickname—”The Thing.”https://phys.org/news/2020-06-egg-antarctica-big-extinct-sea.html
7/1/2020 10:00 AMT10
7/1/2020 12:00 PMAstronomers tend to have a slightly different sense of time than the rest of us. They regularly study events that happened millions or billions of years ago, and objects that have been around for just as long. That’s partly why the recently discovered neutron star known as Swift J1818.0−1607 is remarkable: A new study in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters estimates that it is only about 240 years old — a veritable newborn by cosmic standards.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/a-cosmic-baby-is-discovered-and-its-brilliant
7/1/2020 2:00 PMImages confirm the species, which has been “lost” to science for 29 years, is alive and well in its native Vietnam.https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/silver-backed-chevrotain-rediscovered-vietnam/
7/1/2020 4:00 PMMeganeura is a genus of extinct insects from the Carboniferous period (approximately 300 million years ago), which resembled and are related to the present-day dragonflies. Its wingspans from 65 cm (25.6 in) to more than 70 cm (28 in), M.Monyi is one of the largest known species of flying insects. Meganeura was predatory and their diet consisted mainly of other insects.http://www.geologypage.com/2020/03/meganeura-the-largest-insect-ever-existed-was-a-giant-dragonfly.html
7/1/2020 6:00 PM90,000 years ago, a young girl lived in a cave in the Altai mountains in southern Siberia. Her life was short; she died in her early teens, but she stands at a unique point in human evolution. She is the first known hybrid of two different kinds of ancient humans: the Neanderthals and the Denisovans.https://bigthink.com/scotty-hendricks/90000-year-old-neanderthal-denisovan-human-hybrid-found-in-ancient-cave
7/2/2020 8:00 AMScientists from the international XENON collaboration, an international experimental group including the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU), University of Tokyo; the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research (ICRR), University of Tokyo; the Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research (ISEE), Nagoya University; the Kobayashi-Maskawa Institute for the Origin of Particles and the Universe (KMI), Nagoya University; and the Graduate School of Science, Kobe University, announced today that data from their XENON1T, the world’s most sensitive dark matter experiment, show a surprising excess of events. The scientists do not claim to have found dark matter. Instead, they have observed an unexpected rate of events, the source of which is not yet fully understood. The signature of the excess is similar to what might result from a tiny residual amount of tritium (a hydrogen atom with one proton and two neutrons), but could also be a sign of something more exciting—such as the existence of a new particle known as the solar axion or the indication of previously unknown properties of neutrinos.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-excess-events-xenon1t-dark.html
7/2/2020 10:00 AMT10
7/2/2020 12:00 PMA possible new mission called Trident aims to explore Neptune’s strange moon Triton. Neptune’s largest moon, Triton boasts an uncommon icy mixture on its surface, among other unique characteristics that could help scientists learn more about how bodies in the solar system evolved. Trident is one of four mission concepts competing in a current round of NASA’s Discovery program, which develops relatively low-cost robotic-exploration efforts.https://www.space.com/weird-neptune-moon-triton-nasa-trident-mission-concept.html
7/2/2020 2:00 PMBy detecting an X-ray flare from a very young star using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, researchers have reset the timeline for when stars like the Sun start blasting high-energy radiation into space, as reported in our latest press release. This is significant because it may help answer some questions about our Sun’s earliest days as well as some about the Solar System today.https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/x-rays-from-a-newborn-star-hint-at-our-suns-earliest-days.html
7/2/2020 4:00 PMLast year, the Advanced LIGO-VIRGO gravitational-wave detector network recorded data from 35 merging black holes and neutron stars. A great result—but what did they miss? According to Dr. Rory Smith from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Gravitational Wave Discovery at Monash University in Australia—it’s likely there are another 2 million gravitational wave events from merging black holes, “a pair of merging black holes every 200 seconds and a pair of merging neutron stars every 15 seconds” that scientists are not picking up.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-scientists-reveal-lost-billion-years.html
7/2/2020 6:00 PMAlthough we’re hearing more about the prospect of 3D-printed replacement body parts, those parts need to be implanted via relatively large incisions. That may not always be the case, however, thanks to a new “bio-ink” that could allow parts to be printed within the body.https://newatlas.com/3d-printing/bio-ink-3d-print-body-parts/
7/3/2020 8:00 AMNASA is asking for your help to guide its Curiosity rover around sand traps, sharp rocks and other obstacles on the Red Planet. A new online tool called AI4Mars, hosted on Zooniverse, allows anyone to label parts of the terrain in the landscape surrounding Curiosity, which has been roving on Mars since 2012.https://www.space.com/mars-rover-curiosity-driving-artificial-intelligence.html
7/3/2020 10:00 AMT10
7/3/2020 12:00 PMThe NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope demonstrates its full range of imaging capabilities with two new images of planetary nebulae. The images depict two nearby young planetary nebulae, NGC 6302, dubbed the Butterfly Nebula, and NGC 7027. Both are among the dustiest planetary nebulae known and both contain unusually large masses of gas, which made them an interesting pair for study in parallel by a team of researchers.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-stunning-hubble-images-reveal-stars.html
7/3/2020 2:00 PMResearchers discovered a unique chunk of amber encasing the tail of a non-bird dinosaur — including the first ever preserved skeletal material in history.https://roaring.earth/first-walking-dinosaur-tail-found-preserved-in-amber/
7/3/2020 4:00 PMThe most recent addition to the ranks of the vertebrates is the famed “Tully Monster”, state fossil of Illinois. This oddly-shaped aquatic beast, with its squid-like body and pincered mouth-on-a-trunk also had another secret. This time, it was its stalk-like “blobs.”http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/tully-monster-s-eyes-prove-it-was-a-vertebrate/
7/3/2020 6:00 PM‘Oumuamua, the first known interstellar object to pass through Earth’s solar system, has been called many things: a comet, an asteroid, a cigar-shaped spaceship. Now it has a new description: Astronomers at Yale and the University of Chicago say it’s a hydrogen iceberg.https://scienceblog.com/516691/oumuamua-may-be-a-hydrogen-iceberg/
7/4/2020 8:00 AMResearchers are trying to store robust quantum information in Majorana particles and are generating quantum gates by exploiting the bizarre non-abelian statistics of Majorana zero modes bound to topological defects.https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4499
7/4/2020 10:00 AMT10
7/4/2020 12:00 PMAn underground vat of liquid xenon in Italy may have just detected a new particle, born in the heart of the sun. If that’s indeed what happened, it could upend laws of physics that have held fast for roughly 50 years.https://www.businessinsider.com/dark-matter-experiment-possible-discovery-new-particle-physics-2020-6
7/4/2020 2:00 PMCERN has taken a major step towards building a 100-kilometre circular super-collider to push the frontier of high-energy physics.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cern-makes-bold-push-to-build-23-billion-super-collider/
7/4/2020 4:00 PMAlarming heat scorched Siberia on Saturday as the small town of Verkhoyansk (67.5°N latitude) reached 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit, 32 degrees above the normal high temperature. If verified, this is likely the hottest temperature ever recorded in Siberia and also the hottest temperature ever recorded north of the Arctic Circle, which begins at 66.5°N.https://www.cbsnews.com/news/arctic-hottest-temperature-ever/
7/4/2020 6:00 PMScientists for the first time- captured the movements of electrons and nuclei in a molecule after it was excited with light- just by using a high-speed electron camera. They have shown that with ultrafast electron diffraction, it’s possible to follow electronic and nuclear changes while naturally disentangling the two components.https://www.techexplorist.com/scientists-captured-movements-electrons-nuclei-molecule/32452/
7/5/2020 8:00 AMResearchers, armchair astronauts and even brides and grooms looking for an out-of-this-world wedding experience will be able to celebrate, collect data or simply enjoy the view from an altitude of 100,000 feet in a balloon-borne pressurized cabin, complete with a bar and a restroom, a space startup announced.https://www.cbsnews.com/news/space-tourism-space-perspective-balloon-ride-earth-atmosphere/
7/5/2020 10:00 AMT10
7/5/2020 12:00 PMResearchers from North Carolina State University have discovered that teaching physics to neural networks enables those networks to better adapt to chaos within their environment. The work has implications for improved artificial intelligence (AI) applications ranging from medical diagnostics to automated drone piloting.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-physics-neural-networks-chaos.html
7/5/2020 2:00 PMIn 1995 a pair of scientists discovered a planet outside our solar system orbiting a solar-type star. Since that finding—which won the scientists a portion of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics—researches have discovered more than 4,000 exoplanets, including some Earth-like planets that may have the potential to harbor life.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-intelligent-life-planets-technosignatures-clues.html
7/5/2020 4:00 PMhttps://videos.space.com/m/kvneAa5V/mars-helicopter-ingenuity-fully-integrated-on-perseverance-rover
7/5/2020 6:00 PMIn an era of digital eavesdropping where hackers employ a variety of means to take over built-in video cameras, peruse personal digital data and snoop on cellular conversations, researchers have finally seen the light.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-06-bulb-vibrations-yield-eavesdropping.html
7/6/2020 8:00 AMThe physicists who run the world’s most sensitive experimental search for dark matter have seen something strange. They have uncovered an unexpected excess of events inside their detector that could fit the profile of a hypothetical dark matter particle called an axion. Alternately, the data could be explained by novel properties of neutrinos.https://www.quantamagazine.org/dark-matter-experiment-finds-unexplained-signal-20200617/
7/6/2020 10:00 AMT10
7/6/2020 12:00 PMWhen representation theory emerged in the late 19th century, many mathematicians questioned its worth. In 1897, the English mathematician William Burnside wrote that he doubted that this unorthodox perspective would yield any new results at all.https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-useless-perspective-that-transformed-mathematics-20200609/
7/6/2020 2:00 PMFollowing last month’s report of the reef’s most severe bleaching ever recorded, Australian scientists have just revealed the full extent of the damage today.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/93-of-great-barrier-reef-affected-by-mass-bleaching/
7/6/2020 4:00 PMMaking a vaccine against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 involves a variety of technologies and approaches. There are now more than 150 vaccine development efforts worldwide. Eleven already are being tested in people, and about 50 more are projected to be in clinical trials by the end of the year.https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/health/2020/06/21/different-technologies-developing-vaccine-against-covid-19/5318458002/
7/6/2020 6:00 PMA team of researchers have devised a way to verify that a class of complex programs is bug-free without the need for traditional software testing. Called Armada, the system makes use of a technique called formal verification to prove whether a piece of software will output what it’s supposed to. It targets software that runs using concurrent execution, a widespread method for boosting performance, which has long been a particularly challenging feature to apply this technique to.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-06-method-complex-bug-free.html
7/7/2020 8:00 AMThe virus SARS coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the known cause of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The “spike” or S protein facilitates viral entry into host cells.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-scientists-source-all-atom-covid-spike.html
7/7/2020 10:00 AMT10
7/7/2020 12:00 PMA newly identified subspecies of diademed monkey in Tanzania faces an uncertain future due to growing threats to forest habitat in the region, primatologists have warned.https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/new-to-science-tanzanias-manyara-monkey-is-already-threatened-by-human-activity/
7/7/2020 2:00 PMOver the course of 182 days, the eROSITA X-ray telescope has completed its first full sweep of the sky which it embarked upon about a year ago. This new map of the hot, energetic universe contains more than one million objects, roughly doubling the number of known X-ray sources discovered over the 60-year history of X-ray astronomy. Most of the new sources are active galactic nuclei at cosmological distances, marking the growth of gigantic black holes over cosmic time.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-deepest-view-x-ray-sky.html
7/7/2020 4:00 PMIt has been a regular in the hood since it was a chick. Then, it boldly went where no cassowary has gone before.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/curious-cassowary-paid-australian-couple-a-visit/
7/7/2020 6:00 PMArchaeologists said Monday that they have discovered a major prehistoric monument under the earth near Stonehenge that could shed new light on the origins of the mystical stone circle in southwestern England.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-scientists-huge-ancient-shafts-stonehenge.html
7/8/2020 8:00 AMAsk medieval historian Michael McCormick what year was the worst to be alive, and he’s got an answer: “536.” Not 1349, when the Black Death wiped out half of Europe. Not 1918, when the flu killed 50 million to 100 million people, mostly young adults. But 536.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive
7/8/2020 10:00 AMT10
7/8/2020 12:00 PMThough Pluto is now famously frigid, it may have started off as a hot world that formed rapidly and violently, a new study finds. This result suggests Pluto may have possessed an underground ocean since early on in its life, potentially improving its chances of hosting life, researchers said.https://www.space.com/pluto-hot-formation-subsurface-ocean.html
7/8/2020 2:00 PMWormholes, or tunnels in the fabric of space-time, are ferociously unstable. As soon as even a single photon slips down the tunnel, the wormhole closes in a flash. But what if the problem was that our imagined wormholes weren’t quite weird enough?https://www.space.com/making-stable-wormholes.html
7/8/2020 4:00 PMA 50-year-old theory that began as speculation about how an alien civilization could use a black hole to generate energy has been experimentally verified for the first time in a Glasgow research lab.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-year-old-theory-alien-civilization-exploit.html
7/8/2020 6:00 PMA series of viral articles claimed that NASA had discovered particles from another parallel universe in which time runs backward. These claims were incorrect. The true story is far more exciting and strange, involving a journey into the Big Bang and out the other side.https://www.space.com/truth-behind-nasa-mirror-parallel-universe.html
7/9/2020 8:00 AMAstrophysicists have spotted the strangest gravitational-wave signal yet, an observation that could force scientists to rewrite what they know about the cosmos. Gravitational waves form when massive objects distort spacetime surrounding them and send ripples out across the universe. Scientists caught the first-ever detection of such waves, formed by two colliding black holes, in 2015.https://www.space.com/smallest-black-hole-biggest-neutron-stary-mystery-object.html
7/9/2020 10:00 AMT10
7/9/2020 12:00 PMAstronomers around the world may have lost access to their telescopes during the coronavirus pandemic, sheltering in place along with the rest of us, but that hasn’t kept them from advancing their field. Two astronomers used the shutdown to comb through existing datasets to hunt for a rare type of quasar and wound up rediscovering a so-called “Einstein ring” first observed back in 1987. They became the first to officially measure its distance from Earth, as reported in a recent paper.https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/astronomers-have-finally-measured-the-distance-of-first-observed-einstein-ring/
7/9/2020 2:00 PMNASA’s Ingenuity helicopter is traveling to Mars attached to the belly of the Perseverance rover and must safely detach to begin the first attempt at powered flight on another planet. Tests done at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Lockheed Martin Space show the sequence of events that will bring the helicopter down to the Martian surface.https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=258829685541625
7/9/2020 4:00 PMIf you watched the sun set on Uranus, the sky would start off as a brilliant blue and fade into deeper blues with striking turquoise notes. So how do we know that?https://www.space.com/sunset-on-uranus-and-more-nasa-simulator-videos.html
7/9/2020 6:00 PMThe Arctic is feverish and on fire—at least parts of it are. And that’s got scientists worried about what it means for the rest of the world.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-arctic-siberian-alarms-scientists.html
7/10/2020 8:00 AMWhy does time seem to move forward? It’s a riddle that’s puzzled physicists for well over a century, and they’ve come up with numerous theories to explain time’s arrow. The latest, though, suggests that while time moves forward in our universe, it may run backwards in another, mirror universe that was created on the “other side” of the Big Bang.https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/big-bang-may-created-mirror-universe-time-runs-backwards/
7/10/2020 10:00 AMT10
7/10/2020 12:00 PMUranus is the seventh planet from the sun and the first to be discovered by scientists. Although Uranus is visible to the naked eye, it was long mistaken as a star because of the planet’s dimness and slow orbit. The planet is also notable for its dramatic tilt, which causes its axis to point nearly directly at the sun.https://www.space.com/45-uranus-seventh-planet-in-earths-solar-system-was-first-discovered-planet.html
7/10/2020 2:00 PMTritylodontids—a small, highly specialized group of animals, were previously thought to had gone extinct in Late Jurassic, as they shared the same niche with the more adaptable early mammals.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/250-near-mammal-creature-teeth-unearthed-from-early-cretaceous-japan/
7/10/2020 4:00 PMRipples in spacetime have revealed a distant collision between a black hole and a mystery object, which appears too massive to be a neutron star but not massive enough to be a black hole.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ligo-virgo-detected-collision-black-hole-mystery-object
7/10/2020 6:00 PMIn most countries, people have a belief about where they’d end up if they dug their way through the center of the Earth and popped up on the other side. For people in the USA, they think it’s China. For people in the UK, they think it’s Australia. Australians think it’s somewhere in Europe and hope it’s not the UK because the weather is too terrible there. But prepare to readjust your childhood belief, as this interactive map will show you where you’d really end up if you were to dig your way through the Earth and somehow don’t get burned to death by the core, or crushed by the intense pressure.https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/interactive-map-shows-where-youd-pop-up-if-you-dug-straight-through-the-earth/
7/11/2020 8:00 AMIn a first, astronomers may have seen light from the merger of two black holes, providing opportunities to learn about these mysterious dark objects.https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7688
7/11/2020 10:00 AMWater security is becoming an urgent global challenge. Hundreds of millions of people already live in water-scarce regions, and the UN projects that by 2030 about half the world’s population will be living in highly water-stressed areas. This will be a crisis even for developed countries like the U.S., where water managers in 40 states expect freshwater shortages within the next 10 years. As the global population and GDP grow, so will the demand for freshwater. And, with the continuing rise of global temperatures, water shortages will only get worse.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-unorthodox-desalination-method-global.html
7/11/2020 12:00 PMLately, Earth’s magnetic field has been quiet. Very quiet. The sun is in the pits of what may turn out to be the deepest Solar Minimum in a century. Geomagnetic storms just aren’t happening.https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2020/06/25/a-magnetic-anomaly-ripples-around-the-world/
7/11/2020 2:00 PMScientists have spotted thousands of worlds in other solar systems, so many that exoplanets have become a dime a dozen. But in our neighborhood, three quarters of planets have at least one moon, and no such object in other systems has been confidently discovered so far — such worlds are just too small and far away.https://www.space.com/six-exomoons-possibly-discovered.html
7/11/2020 4:00 PMThe UN’s weather agency announced Thursday the longest lightning bolt on record—a single flash in Brazil on October 31, 2018 that cut the sky across more than 700 kilometers. That is equivalent to the distance between Boston and Washington DC in the United States, or between London and Basel, Switzerland, the World Meteorological Organization said in a statement.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-km-brazil-megaflash-lightning.html
7/11/2020 6:00 PMA trio of theoretical physicists at the Pennsylvania State University has calculated the upper limit for the possible quantization of time—they suggest 10⁻³³ seconds as the upper limit for the period of a universal oscillator. In their paper, Garrett Wendel, Luis Martínez and Martin Bojowald outline their theory and suggest a possible way to prove it.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-theorists-upper-limit-quantization.html
7/12/2020 8:00 AMModern physics knows a great deal about how the universe works, from the grand scale of galaxies down to the infinitesimally small size of quarks and gluons. Still, the answers to some major mysteries, such as the nature of dark matter and origin of gravity, have remained out of reach.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-cern-rare-events-massive-carriers.html
7/12/2020 10:00 AMPhysicists have filled in the last missing detail of how nuclear fusion powers the Sun, by catching neutrinos emanating from the star’s core.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/neutrinos-reveal-final-secret-of-suns-nuclear-fusion/
7/12/2020 12:00 PMThe South Pole has warmed three times faster than the rest of the planet in the last 30 years due to warmer tropical ocean temperatures, new research showed. Antarctica’s temperature varies widely according to season and region, and for years it had been thought that the South Pole had stayed cool even as the continent heated up.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-south-pole-faster-rest-earth.html
7/12/2020 2:00 PMA huge plume of Sahara Desert dust that drifted across the Atlantic Ocean has reached the southeastern United States. These events have happened before, according to Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgia’s Atmospheric Sciences Program. Hundreds of millions of tons of dust from the giant North African desert collect in plumes and move west every year, and those plumes have long helped build up Caribbean beaches and fertilize soil in the Amazon.https://www.space.com/saharan-dust-cloud-is-here.html
7/12/2020 4:00 PMhttps://www.popsci.com/story/science/gliese-887-exoplanets-super-earths/
7/12/2020 6:00 PMWith dreams of Mars on the minds of both NASA and Elon Musk, long-distance crewed missions through space are coming. But you might be surprised to learn that modern rockets don’t go all that much faster than the rockets of the past.https://www.space.com/nuclear-powered-rockets-to-explore-solar-system.html
7/13/2020 8:00 AMModelling of the Chicxulub asteroid impact 66 million years ago shows it created a world largely unsuitable for dinosaurs to live in. The asteroid, which struck the Earth off the coast of Mexico at the end of the Cretaceous era 66 million years ago, has long been believed to be the cause of the demise of all dinosaur species except those that became birds.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-asteroid-impact-volcanoes-earth-uninhabitable.html
7/13/2020 10:00 AMSeeing light emerge from a nanoscale experiment didn’t come as a big surprise to Rice University physicists. But it got their attention when that light was 10,000 times brighter than they expected.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-physicists-surprisingly-strong-high-nanogaps.html
7/13/2020 12:00 PMSharks are terrifying creatures at the best of times, and the Whale Shark — despite being harmless to humans — is the biggest of all, given they can grow up to 32 feet in length. But scientists have just revealed a whole new layer of wonder (and potentially terror) regarding the largest fish in the sea. Their eyes are covered in teeth – the technical term is “dermal denticles.”https://www.cnet.com/news/scientists-say-whale-sharks-have-teeth-on-their-eyeballs/
7/13/2020 2:00 PMScience fiction movies are filled with the ubiquitous “escape pod” – the small capsule or craft that could be used (as the plot required) for someone to escape from a spaceship in a hurry. In reality, in the 1990’s/early 2000’s, NASA, ESA, and the German Space Agency came close to building one.https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/story-how-nasa-once-attempted-design-lifeboat-iss-163975
7/13/2020 4:00 PMA tiny Chinese satellite in lunar orbit captured incredible images of a total solar eclipse over South America last year, thanks to commands from radio enthusiasts.https://www.space.com/chinese-satellite-sees-total-solar-eclipse-2019-from-moon.html
7/13/2020 6:00 PMResearchers have completed a new study of how well a variety of natural and synthetic fabrics filter particles of a similar size to the virus that causes COVID-19. Of the 32 cloth materials tested, three of the five most effective at blocking particles were 100% cotton and had a visible raised fiber or nap, such as found on flannels. Four of the five lowest performers were synthetic materials. The testing also showed that multiple fabric layers could improve cotton’s effectiveness even further. None of the materials came close to the efficiency of N95 masks.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-layered-cotton-fabric-covid-synthetics.html
7/14/2020 8:00 AMThe weird recent dimming of the star Betelgeuse was caused by spots that temporarily covered at least half of the enormous star’s surface, a new study suggests.https://www.space.com/betelgeuse-red-giant-star-dimming-starspots.html
7/14/2020 10:00 AMAstronomers have found the most massive known black hole in the very early Universe, and it’s a whopper: It has 34 billion — yes, billion, with a b — times the mass of the Sun.https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/supermassive-black-hole-eats-a-sun-a-day
7/14/2020 12:00 PMThe Large Hadron Collider Beauty (LHCb) project has observed an exotic particle made up of four charm quarks for the first time.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-exotic-particle-cern.html
7/14/2020 2:00 PMAstronomers have spotted the exposed core of a massive alien world, an unprecedented find that could shed considerable light on planet formation, evolution and diversity. The planetary core, called TOI-849b, is unlike anything scientists have seen before, and it could hide a wealth of exciting information in its bizarre depths.https://www.space.com/exposed-planetary-core-discovery-nasa-tess.html
7/14/2020 4:00 PMThe universe, as seen through the lens of quantum mechanics, is a noisy, crackling space where particles blink constantly in and out of existence, creating a background of quantum noise whose effects are normally far too subtle to detect in everyday objects.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-quantum-fluctuations-jiggle-human-scale.html
7/14/2020 6:00 PMIf the world is to maintain a sustainable economy and fend off the worst effects of climate change, at least one industry will soon have to ramp up dramatically: the mining of metals needed to create a vast infrastructure for renewable power generation, storage, transmission and usage. The problem is, demand for such metals is likely to far outstrip currently both known deposits and the existing technology used to find more ore bodies.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-geologists-deep-earth-hidden-metal-lodes.html
7/15/2020 8:00 AMIn 1981, many of the world’s leading cosmologists gathered at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, a vestige of the coupled lineages of science and theology located in an elegant villa in the gardens of the Vatican. Stephen Hawking chose the August setting to present what he would later regard as his most important idea: a proposal about how the universe could have arisen from nothing.https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-debate-hawkings-idea-that-the-universe-had-no-beginning-20190606/
7/15/2020 10:00 AMhttps://videos.space.com/m/piDNWQkx/icy-mars-korolev-crater-is-51-miles-across-flyover-animation-from-orbiter-imagery
7/15/2020 12:00 PMAstronomers have found a way to pinpoint our solar system’s center of mass to within a mere 330 feet (100 meters), a recent study reports.https://www.space.com/solar-system-mass-center-gravitational-waves.html
7/15/2020 2:00 PMThis past autumn, a professor at Wuhan University named Jau Tang was hard at work piecing together a thruster prototype that, at first, sounds too good to be true. The basic idea, he said in an interview, is that his device turns electricity directly into thrust — no fossil fuels required — by using microwaves to energize compressed air into a plasma state and shooting it out like a jet.https://futurism.com/scientist-jet-engine-electricity-thrust
7/15/2020 4:00 PMPhysicists have reported what could be the first incontrovertible evidence for the existence of unusual particle-like objects called anyons, which were first proposed more than 40 years ago. Anyons are the latest addition to a growing family of phenomena called quasiparticles, which are not elementary particles, but are instead collective excitations of many electrons in solid devices. Their discovery — made using a 2D electronic device — could represent the first steps towards making anyons the basis of future quantum computers.https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01988-0
7/15/2020 6:00 PMSolar energy researchers at Oregon State University are shining their scientific spotlight on materials with a crystal structure discovered nearly two centuries ago. Not all materials with the structure, known as perovskites, are semiconductors. But perovskites based on a metal and a halogen are, and they hold tremendous potential as photovoltaic cells that could be much less expensive to make than the silicon-based cells that have owned the market since its inception in the 1950s.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-crystal-years-key-solar-cell.html
7/16/2020 8:00 AMSRON-astronomers have found the signature for aluminum oxide (AlO) in the spectrum of exoplanet WASP-43b. This came as a surprise because AlO is expected to stay hidden in the lower atmospheric layers. It is only the second time that astronomers have observed the molecule in an exoplanet’s atmosphere.https://phys.org/news/2020-06-astronomers-unexpected-molecule-exoplanet-atmosphere.html
7/16/2020 10:00 AMThrough simulations of a dying star, a team of theoretical physics researchers have found the evolutionary origin and the maximum mass of black holes which are discovered by the detection of gravitational waves.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-maximum-mass-massive-black-holes.html
7/16/2020 12:00 PMWhat happens when you coat yarn with explosives? You get a basic fuse suitable for fireworks. But what happens when you coat yarn made of carbon nanotubes with explosives? You get an entirely new way to create electricity.https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/carbon-nanotube-fuses-unleash-surge-electrons-called-thermopower-wave/
7/16/2020 2:00 PMLet’s turn back the hands of time. Before extinction knocked dinosaurs off their pillar, before the “Great Dying” extinction wiped out 95% of all organisms – we had the Paleozoic Era. During this age in Earth’s history, between 541 million and 252 million years ago, arthropods (animals with exoskeletons such as insects, crustaceans, scorpions, and horseshoe crabs) were exploring the extremes of size, from tiny to huge.https://theconversation.com/giant-sea-scorpions-were-the-underwater-titans-of-prehistoric-australia-141290
7/16/2020 4:00 PMWith a name as pretty as Gynaephora groenlandica, you’d imagine this moth to be a frail creature with no defenses at all. But it is one of the hardiest insects in the world, surviving the Arctic winter frozen and still alive as a caterpillar. The Arctic woolly bear is a true survivor in every sense of the word and has even wormed its way into our culture.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/the-oldest-caterpillar-on-earth-spends-its-winters-frozen-solid/
7/16/2020 6:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=saved&v=629913151202160
7/17/2020 8:00 AMTextbooks had to be rewritten. Members of the public were outraged. Our understanding of the solar system itself was forever changed on Aug. 24, 2006, when researchers at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) voted to reclassify Pluto, changing its status from a planet to a dwarf planet — a relegation that was largely seen as a demotion and which continues to have reverberations to this day.https://www.space.com/why-pluto-is-not-a-planet.html
7/17/2020 10:00 AMAstronauts caught a stunning natural light show this weekend from a comet that has been dazzling skywatchers on Earth as well. That streaker, called Comet NEOWISE or C/2020 F3, first came on the scene at the end of March. At that point, the icy lump was quite faint in our skies, and astronomers weren’t sure that would change. But as time has passed, the comet has brightened immensely, tantalizing skywatchers even after they were disappointed by two other recent comets that faded away.https://www.space.com/comet-neowise-space-station-astronaut-photos.html
7/17/2020 12:00 PMWithout a mask, droplets produced during coughing can travel up to 12 feet. With a mask, this distance is reduced to just a few inches.https://www.livescience.com/face-mask-visualization-droplets-covid-19.html
7/17/2020 2:00 PMMost everyone knows that heating and cooling buildings is not only expensive, but a massive issue due to the resulting carbon emissions. According to the UK Green Building Council, the built environment contributes around 40% of the UK’s total carbon footprint—with heating alone contributing to 10% of the total.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-07-water-filled-windows-huge-splash-energy.html
7/17/2020 4:00 PMIf lightning exists on Mars, it may be less energetic and frequent than lightning on Earth, all because of the Red Planet’s thin air, study finds.https://www.space.com/mars-lightning-weak-thin-atmosphere.html
7/17/2020 6:00 PMIn an effort to improve large touchscreens, LED light panels and window-mounted infrared solar cells, researchers at the University of Michigan have made plastic conductive while also making it more transparent.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-plastic-transparent-adding-electrical.html
7/18/2020 8:00 AMHow did the chemical makeup of our planet’s core shape its geologic history and habitability? Life as we know it could not exist without Earth’s magnetic field and its ability to deflect dangerous ionizing particles from the solar wind and more far-flung cosmic rays. It is continuously generated by the motion of liquid iron in Earth’s outer core, a phenomenon called the geodynamo.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-earth-sustain-magnetic-field.html
7/18/2020 10:00 AMFossils can tell scientists a lot about prehistoric life, but they can’t say everything. When it comes to understanding our animal and plant forebears, there’s a lot we’ll probably never learn from fossils, like what colors ancient animals were. However, in rare cases, researchers get lucky. In a new paper published in the journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, by a team of researchers at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, the group identified the true colors of three ancient insects that were preserved in amber—an incredibly rare find for paleontologists.https://www.popsci.com/story/animals/ancient-insects-amber-colors/
7/18/2020 12:00 PMNew research provides the first direct evidence for the Gulf Stream blender effect, identifying a new mechanism of mixing water across the swift-moving current. The results have important implications for weather, climate and fisheries because ocean mixing plays a critical role in these processes. The Gulf Stream is one of the largest drivers of climate and biological productivity from Florida to Newfoundland and along the western coast of Europe.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-evidence-ocean-gulf-stream.html
7/18/2020 2:00 PMDinosaurs and flying pterosaurs may be known for their remarkable size, but a newly described species from Madagascar that lived around 237 million years ago suggests that they originated from extremely small ancestors. The fossil reptile, named Kongonaphon kely, or “tiny bug slayer,” would have stood just 10 centimeters (or about 4 inches) tall. The description and analysis of this fossil and its relatives may help explain the origins of flight in pterosaurs, the presence of “fuzz” on the skin of both pterosaurs and dinosaurs, and other questions about these charismatic animals.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-tiny-ancient-relative-dinosaurs-pterosaurs.html
7/18/2020 4:00 PMhttps://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2020/07/05/ancient-volcanoes/
7/18/2020 6:00 PMFrom movies to museum exhibits, the dinosaur Dilophosaurus is no stranger to pop culture. Many probably remember it best from the movie “Jurassic Park,” where it’s depicted as a venom-spitting beast with a rattling frill around its neck and two paddle-like crests on its head.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-famous-jurassic-dinosaur-lizard-bird.html
7/19/2020 8:00 AMChinese scientists have published an analysis of a curious substance on the moon which generated widespread interest following its discovery by the Yutu 2 rover last year.https://www.space.com/moon-far-side-yutu-2-rover-weird-substance-analysis.html
7/19/2020 10:00 AMNASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has started a road trip that will continue through the summer across roughly a mile (1.6 kilometers) of terrain. By trip’s end, the rover will be able to ascend to the next section of the 3-mile-tall Martian (5-kilometer-tall) mountain it’s been exploring since 2014, searching for conditions that may have supported ancient microbial life.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-curiosity-mars-rover-summer-road.html
7/19/2020 12:00 PMDogs possess a sense of smell many times more sensitive than even the most advanced man-made instrument. Just how powerful is a pupper schnoz? Powerful enough to detect substances at concentrations of one part per trillion—a single drop of liquid in 20 Olympic-size swimming pools.https://www.wired.com/story/the-science-of-the-sniff-why-dogs-are-great-disease-detectors/
7/19/2020 2:00 PMNew research by scientists from Australia and Mexico reveals the world’s first complete angiosperm “time tree”—a reconstruction of the evolution of the Earth’s flowering plants through time.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-global-reveals-tree-earth.html
7/19/2020 4:00 PMImagine being able to disappear from one place and then reappear in the exact same condition at another location. You could visit your favorite bakery in Paris for breakfast, spend the afternoon on a beach in Thailand, and — why relegate yourself to Earth? — beam yourself up to the moon before going home to your dinner. The idea of teleportation is fascinating and prevalent in science fiction – and while seemingly unattainable, it is not actually impossible according to the laws of physics … it just depends on scale.https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/teleportation-is-possible-it-just-depends-on-scale/
7/19/2020 6:00 PMWormholes make the best shortcuts in the universe. That’s true in a literal sense, since the theoretical things can connect distant corners of the cosmos (or even different universes), allowing a traveler to go someplace without having to visit everywhere in between. Too bad, then, that as far as we know, the things don’t exist. Or wormholes could exist – we just don’t know whether they actually do.https://astronomy.com/news/2019/07/if-wormholes-exist-could-we-really-travel-through-them
7/20/2020 8:00 AMNASA has added more safety fixes for Boeing’s space capsule before it can fly astronauts following a pair of close calls during last year’s test flight. In closing out the seven-month investigation, NASA officials said Tuesday they have now identified 80 corrective actions, mostly involving software and testing, that must be done before the Starliner capsule launches again. The previous count was 61.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-nasa-safety-boeing-crew-capsule.html
7/20/2020 10:00 AMThree decades and $23.7 billion later, the 25,000-ton International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is close to becoming something like the sun.https://www.wired.com/story/fusion-energy-iter-reactor-ready-to-shine/
7/20/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=198757144555131
7/20/2020 2:00 PMCurrently, low-alloy aluminum is widely used in electrical engineering and machine building. At the same time, it should be noted that modern electrical engineering places very high and in some cases mutually exclusive requirements to aluminum alloys.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-team-technology-superplastic-wire.html
7/20/2020 4:00 PMEach year, dust from the Sahara Desert blows off Africa and across the Atlantic, but most years that plume isn’t so massive it’s nicknamed “Godzilla.” This June, the annual plume earned that nickname, as well as the title of the dustiest such event in the 20 years that scientists have kept records of these storms. All told, it contained between 60% and 70% more dust than a typical one of these plumes. It also traveled farther than the annual phenomenon, called the Saharan Air Layer, typically does.https://www.space.com/godzilla-dust-plume-from-sahara-satellite-photos.html
7/20/2020 6:00 PMThe soil beneath our feet is alive with electrical signals being sent from one plant to another, according to research in which a University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) distinguished professor emeritus in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering participated.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-electrical-tomato.html
7/21/2020 8:00 AMEarly on July 11, 2020 (UTC), the spacecraft will perform its first outbound flyby of Venus, passing approximately 516 miles above the surface as it curves around the planet.https://blogs.nasa.gov/parkersolarprobe/2020/07/10/parker-solar-probe-prepares-for-third-venus-flyby/
7/21/2020 10:00 AMClimate change and an increase in disturbed bee habitats from expanding agriculture and development in northeastern North America over the last 30 years are likely responsible for a 94 per cent loss of plant-pollinator networks, York University researchers found.https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-07/yu-a9p071420.php
7/21/2020 12:00 PMThe evolution of novel traits such as wings, flowers, horns, or limbs, is known to be important to drive biodiversity. However, it is not easy to understand how such changes happen at the genetic level.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/bacterial-genes-may-give-a-clue-on-wings-evolution/
7/21/2020 2:00 PMSpectacular 3D maps of the universe have revealed one of the biggest cosmic structures ever found — an almost-inconceivable wall stretching 1.4 billion light-years across that contains hundreds of thousands of galaxies.https://www.livescience.com/south-pole-wall-discovered-in-space.html
7/21/2020 4:00 PMResearchers exploring the deep ocean off the South Carolina coast capture a group of sharks feasting on a swordfish when one of them unexpectedly becomes dinner himself.https://www.ebaumsworld.com/videos/noaa-scientists-film-shark-swallowed-whole-during-deep-sea-feeding-frenzy/86316363/
7/21/2020 6:00 PMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39VKA8vPXGg
7/22/2020 8:00 AMVenus? is about the same size as the Earth and the same mass. It’s actually a little bit closer to us than Mars. It’s definitely warmer than Mars. So why don’t we visit our sister planet instead of the red one? Oh, that’s right: Venus is basically hell.https://www.space.com/venus-runaway-greenhouse-effect-earth-next.html
7/22/2020 10:00 AMDozens of fossilized whales, seals, aquatic sloths, and other marine animals have been found in an ancient tidal flat in northern Chile.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/fossil-graveyard-of-marine-animals-found-in-chile/
7/22/2020 12:00 PMA local government in Spain reports that the footprint of a large carnivorous reptile called Isochirotherium has been found in Catalonia.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/footprint-of-extinct-crocodile-like-animal-found-in-spain/
7/22/2020 2:00 PMPhysicists think they have detected the first conglomerate of four quarks incorporating more than two of the same kind. This tetraquark contains four quarks of the charm variety: two charm quarks and their antimatter counterparts, called anticharm quarks.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-particle-cern-tetraquark-first-four-same-kind-quark
7/22/2020 4:00 PMBelow the ice-covered surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus hides a vast ocean. This sprawling ocean is likely 1 billion years old, which means it’s the perfect age to harbor life, said Marc Neveu, a research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.https://www.space.com/enceladus-billion-year-old-ocean.html
7/22/2020 6:00 PMA new map of the entire sky, as seen in X-rays, looks deeper into space than any other of its kind. The map, released June 19, is based on data from the first full scan of the sky made by the eROSITA X-ray telescope onboard the Russian-German SRG spacecraft, which launched in July 2019.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/xray-map-sky-erosita-telescope-milky-way
7/23/2020 8:00 AMThe latest creation from German robotics company Festo promises not only literal flights of fancy, but quite promising real-world applications down the road as well. The company unveiled a video of a stunningly lifelike fleet of robo-birds that glide through the air with guidance from an ultra-sideband radio system.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-07-german-firm-bionic-birds.html
7/23/2020 10:00 AMPaleontologist Gerhard Gierlinski, from Warsaw, Poland, was just trying to get away from it all in the summer of 2002 and enjoy the warm seas and soft sands on the Greek island of Crete with his girlfriend. A researcher at the Polish Geological Institute, he was always ready to take samples of interesting things he spied on vacations, and he traveled with a hammer, a camera and a GPS for just such occasions. What he discovered along the Mediterranean shores of the town of Trachilos would rock his world and send some researchers who were convinced that humans evolved solely in Africa, into angry denial, resulting in many of them casting aspersions on his jaw-dropping find.https://greece.greekreporter.com/2020/07/10/hominid-footprints-on-crete-could-change-evolutionary-theory-for-good/
7/23/2020 12:00 PMIn a rare sighting, conservationists have captured new images of the world’s rarest gorillas with several babies in southern Nigeria.https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/09/africa/rare-gorillas-nigeria-scn/index.html
7/23/2020 2:00 PMIt turns out the moon is a little younger than scientists previously thought — about 85 million years younger, to be precise.https://www.space.com/moon-85-million-years-younger-than-thought.html
7/23/2020 4:00 PMThe smallest conceivable length of time might be no larger than a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second. That’s according to a new theory describing the implications of the universe having a fundamental clock-like property whose ticks would interact with our best atomic timepieces.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universes-clock-might-have-bigger-ticks-than-we-imagine/
7/23/2020 6:00 PMScientists from South Ural State University (SUSU) have discovered new facts about the use of horses in the Bronze Age, working with materials from the monuments of Andronovo culture. As part of an international team from Kazakhstan, Russia, and the U.S., the researchers studied the age of animals found in the ancient mound, as well as changes in the skull that indicate the use of horses by riders.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-ancient-evidence-horsemanship-bronze-age.html
7/24/2020 8:00 AMResearchers at Columbia Engineering and Montana State University report today that they have found that placing sufficient strain in a 2-D material—tungsten diselenide (WSe2)—creates localized states that can yield single-photon emitters. Using sophisticated optical microscopy techniques developed at Columbia over the past three years, the team was able to directly image these states for the first time, revealing that even at room temperature they are highly tunable and act as quantum dots, tightly confined pieces of semiconductors that emit light.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-tiny-quantum.html
7/24/2020 10:00 AMEarth will be home to 8.8 billion souls in 2100, two billion fewer than current UN projections, according to a major study published Wednesday that foresees new global power alignments shaped by declining fertility rates and greying populations.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-world-population-billion.html
7/24/2020 12:00 PMIn 2020, we’ve learned a lot about fluid dynamics, such as the way our breath droplets spray through the air when we’re not wearing a protective mask. But scientists hope you have some room in your heart to think about a very different kind of fluid: penguin poo.https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a33300667/penguin-poop-physics/
7/24/2020 2:00 PMCaltech microbiologists have discovered bacteria that feed on manganese and use the metal as their source of calories. Such microbes were predicted to exist over a century ago, but none had been found or described until now.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-bacteria-metal-diet-dirty-glassware.html
7/24/2020 4:00 PMA strange white dwarf star hurtling through the Milky Way may be the survivor of a “partial supernova,” a new study finds.https://www.space.com/partial-supernova-white-dwarf-blasts-across-milky-way.html
7/24/2020 6:00 PMThere’s an electrical hum in most animals, including ourselves. No one knows where it came from or why exactly it exists. Now, new research suggests this electric hum came from primordial lightning.https://www.space.com/life-electrical-hum-from-lightning.html
7/25/2020 8:00 AMThe Sierra Nevada Corporation recently received a Pentagon contract to craft an experimental space outpost capable of supporting various research and development, training, and operational missions, including potentially with humans aboard. This comes as the U.S. military as a whole, including the nascent U.S. Space Force, is increasingly focused on operations in various orbits around the Earth, and competition there, as well as in cislunar space between our planet and the Moon.https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/34840/the-pentagon-moves-to-launch-its-own-experimental-mini-space-station
7/25/2020 10:00 AMA mutation in the protein that allows SARS-CoV-2 to enter cells might make it easier for the virus to spread — or it might not make a difference at all. That’s the crux of a debate over a mutation known as D614G, which affects the spike protein on the virus’ surface. The mutation is not new. It appears in low levels in samples taken from COVID-19 patients as far back as February. But this variation of the virus (nicknamed the “G” variation) seems to show up in more and more of the virus samples taken from people infected recently compared to early in the pandemic.https://www.livescience.com/new-coronavirus-mutation-explained.html
7/25/2020 12:00 PMIn the movie “Ant-Man,” the title character can shrink in size and travel by soaring on the back of an insect. Now researchers at the University of Washington have developed a tiny wireless steerable camera that can also ride aboard an insect, giving everyone a chance to see an Ant-Man view of the world.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-07-gopro-beetles-robotic-camera-backpack.html
7/25/2020 2:00 PMThe impact event that formed the Chicxulub crater (Yucatán Peninsula, México) caused the extinction of 75% of species on Earth 66 million years ago, including non-avian dinosaurs. One place that did not experience much extinction was the deep, as organisms living in the abyss made it through the mass extinction event with just some changes to community structure.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-evolution-chicxulub-asteroid-impact-rapid.html
7/25/2020 4:00 PMGlobal emissions of methane have reached the highest levels on record. Increases are being driven primarily by growth of emissions from coal mining, oil and natural gas production, cattle and sheep ranching, and landfills.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-global-methane-emissions-soar-high.html
7/25/2020 6:00 PMTerahertz radiation, or T-rays, has barely been exploited compared to most of the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum. Yet T-rays potentially have applications in next-generation wireless communications (6G/7G), security systems, biomedicine, and even art history. A new device for controlling T-rays using a specially designed ‘metasurface’ with properties not found in nature could begin to realize this potential.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-underused-electromagnetic-spectrum-optics-boost.html
7/26/2020 8:00 AMSea spiders are some of the strangest animals to persist beneath the surface of the sea — and they have officially just gotten weirder. As opposed to normal veins and blood vessels, sea spiders have intestines that span the lengths of their limbs. While insects primarily utilize a substance called hemolymph in order to get oxygen to their cells, sea spiders do things a bit differently.https://roaring.earth/sea-spiders-breathe-intestines/
7/26/2020 10:00 AMIt is the world’s most common farm animal as well as humanity’s largest single source of animal protein. Some 24 billion strong, it outnumbers all other birds by an order of magnitude. Yet for 2 centuries, biologists have struggled to explain how the chicken became the chicken. Now, the first extensive study of the bird’s full genome concludes that people in northern Southeast Asia or southern China domesticated a colorful pheasant sometime after about 7500 B.C.E.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/chicken-first-crossed-road-southeast-asia-landmark-gene-study-finds
7/26/2020 12:00 PMHypernovas are the most powerful supernova explosions in the universe, 10 to even up to 100 times brighter than a typical supernova. That’s enough energy to completely obliterate our sun 100,000 times over, or enough energy to supply our world’s current total power consumption for the next billion, billion, billion years.https://www.space.com/how-to-make-a-hypernova-explosion.html
7/26/2020 2:00 PMAll chimpanzees eat animals at least sometimes, including anything from ants and termites to bushpigs and even baboons. Monkeys, in fact, are typically the most frequent item on the menu, and in some cases chimpanzees can eat so many monkeys they threaten to wipe out entire populations. One group in Senegal even hunts tiny, mouse-like primates known as bushbabies by using spear-like tools to first probe the holes the bushbabies hide in during the day, before reaching in to grab their prey. But until now scientists had never observed them eating reptiles.https://www.popsci.com/chimpanzees-smashing-eating-tortoises-cognition-tools/
7/26/2020 4:00 PMThe Hyksos, who ruled during the 15th Dynasty of ancient Egypt, were not foreign invaders, but a group who rose to power from within, according to a study published July 8, 2020. The Hyksos were a foreign dynasty that ruled parts of Egypt between approximately 1638-1530 BCE, the first instance of Egypt being ruled by individuals of a foreign origin. The common story is that the Hyksos were invaders from a far-off land, but this idea has been drawn into question. Archaeological evidence does link Hyksos culture with an origin in the Near East, but exactly how they rose to power is unclear.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-hyksos-15th-dynasty-rulers-ancient.html
7/26/2020 6:00 PMPeer closely enough, and everything begins to look granular. Trees are made largely of quarks. Sunbeams are swarms of photons. Phones run on streams of electrons. Physicists have detected particles of matter, light, and most forces—but no experiment has yet unveiled gravity’s grainy side.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/simulation-shows-potential-for-glowing-gravitons/
7/27/2020 8:00 AMhttps://www.facebook.com/groups/SpaceTalk101/permalink/1108181299564689/
7/27/2020 10:00 AMLook, ma, no wing flaps. An Andean condor, one of the largest flying birds on the planet, soared through the air for 100 miles (172 kilometers) and didn’t bother with flapping its wings. This epic example of flight comes to us from a team led by researchers at Swansea University in the UK.https://www.cnet.com/news/incredible-condor-soared-for-100-miles-without-flapping-its-wings/
7/27/2020 12:00 PMNew images of the bright Comet NEOWISE show signs of a sodium tail, giving scientists fresh insight on what’s happening on the surface.https://www.space.com/comet-neowise-sodium-tail-image.html
7/27/2020 2:00 PMThis image—the closest ever taken of the Sun—shows the corona teeming with thousands of miniature solar flares, which scientists have dubbed ‘campfires’. The pictures are the first released from the Solar Orbiter satellite mission, led by the European Space Agency.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/this-photo-of-the-sun-is-the-closest-ever-taken/
7/27/2020 4:00 PMMassive dinosaurs and pterosaurs have a newfound cousin: a palm-size pipsqueak of a reptile, a new fossil reveals. Even the name of the newly described reptile — Kongonaphon kely, or “tiny bug slayer” in Malagasy and Greek — is an homage to its diminutive size, as well as its likely diet of hard-shelled insects, the researchers said.https://www.livescience.com/dinosaur-pterosaur-reptile-relative.html
7/27/2020 6:00 PMWater, so ordinary and so essential to life, acts in ways that are quite puzzling to scientists. For example, why is ice less dense than water, floating rather than sinking the way other liquids do when they freeze? Now a new study provides strong evidence for a controversial theory that at very cold temperatures water can exist in two distinct liquid forms, one being less dense and more structured than the other.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-evidence-decades-old-theory-odd-behaviors.html
7/28/2020 8:00 AMScientists have found that some fishes absorb up to 99.956 percent of the light that hits them. The deep-sea menagerie just got a whole lot weirder.https://www.wired.com/story/meet-the-ultra-black-vantafish/
7/28/2020 10:00 AMAbout 10 million light-years from Earth, a blurry galaxy named Mirach’s Ghost may help unravel a dark mystery: where the largest black holes in the universe came from. But this ghostly galaxy has also deepened the mystery surrounding these objects’ births.https://www.livescience.com/supermassive-black-hole-origin-mystery.html
7/28/2020 12:00 PMSpaceflight Inc., the leading satellite rideshare and mission management provider, announced that it will be flying its next generation orbital transfer vehicle, Sherpa-FX, on a fully dedicated rideshare mission with SpaceX. The mission, called SXRS-3 by Spaceflight, is scheduled to launch on a Falcon 9 no earlier than December 2020.https://spaceflight.com/spaceflight-inc-unveils-next-gen-orbital-transfer-vehicle-to-fly-aboard-next-spacex-rideshare-mission/
7/28/2020 2:00 PMAccording to the United Nations, about one-fifth of the world’s population lives in areas where water is scarce. Therefore, technologies to produce clean water from undrinkable sources, such as seawater, river or lake water, and contaminated water, are urgently needed. Now, researchers reporting in Nano Letters have developed a wood-based steam generator that, with the help of bacterial-produced nanomaterials, harnesses solar energy to purify water.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-purifying-wood-bacteria-sun.html
7/28/2020 4:00 PMCitizen scientists recently helped direct astronomers to a pair of objects that straddle the line between planets and stars. These newly-spotted substellar objects are brown dwarfs, which share many elements in common with stars. However, these gaseous bodies don’t have enough mass to start nuclear fusion in their core, so they resemble planets more than stars.https://www.space.com/citizen-scientists-help-spot-brown-dwarfs.html
7/28/2020 6:00 PMIt seems the universe has an odd sense of humor. While a crown-encrusted virus has run roughshod over the world, another entirely different corona about 100 million light years from Earth has mysteriously disappeared.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-astronomers-black-hole-corona-reappear.html
7/29/2020 8:00 AMNew insights into an elusive process that protects developing sperm cells from damage in growing embryos, sheds light on how genetic information passes down, uninterrupted, through generations.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-sperm-discovery-reveals-clue-genetic.html
7/29/2020 10:00 AMMolecular biologists and bioengineers at the University of California San Diego have unraveled key mechanisms behind the mysteries of aging. They isolated two distinct paths that cells travel during aging and engineered a new way to genetically program these processes to extend lifespan.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-paths-aging-insights-healthspan.html
7/29/2020 12:00 PMAn international team of scientists from NUST MISIS, Russian Academy of Science and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf has found that instead of lithium (Li), sodium (Na) “stacked” in a special way can be used for battery production. Sodium batteries would be significantly cheaper and equivalently or even more capacious than existing lithium batteries.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-lithium-sodium-batteries.html
7/29/2020 2:00 PMThe launch of NASA’s next flagship space telescope has been pushed back another seven months. The liftoff of the $9.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope has been delayed from March 2021 until Oct. 31 of that year, NASA officials announced, citing technical difficulties as well as complications imposed by the coronavirus pandemic.https://www.space.com/nasa-delays-james-webb-space-telescope-october-2021.html
7/29/2020 4:00 PMAfter expanding their search, a team of researchers found that the Red Planet’s ancient subsurface could have housed microbial life for hundreds of millions of years. By borrowing hydrogen electrons from water, microbes could’ve had enough energy to not only survive underground, but to thrive for miles below the surface. If true, future missions could search areas where the subsurface is now exposed and potentially prove the existence of Martian life once and for all.https://astronomy.com/news/2018/09/mars-underground-habitable-zone-could-have-hosted-life-for-millions-of-years
7/29/2020 6:00 PMSunspots and their behavior are direct manifestations of the Sun’s magnetic field, which we still don’t fully understand. Here’s what we do know: Ex-tremely hot gas, called plasma, in the Sun’s outer atmosphere rotates differentially — faster at the middle than at the poles — while plasma in the interior rotates as a solid body. The rotation of the charged solar plasma produces a current. This current creates a magnetic field like that of a bar magnet with a north pole and a south pole aligned with the axis of rotation, but the differences of rotation speed mean the magnetic field becomes wound up and tangled.https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2013/08/solar-blemishes
7/30/2020 8:00 AMNew research shows that one of the heaviest known elements can be manipulated to a greater degree than previously thought, potentially paving the way for new strategies to recycle nuclear fuel and better long-term storage of radioactive elements.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-fsu-news-scientists-heavy-element.html
7/30/2020 10:00 AMFor more than 100 years, astronomers have been observing a curious star located some 190 light years away from Earth in the constellation Libra. It rapidly journeys across the sky at 800,000 mph (1.3 million kilometers per hour). But more interesting than that, HD 140283 — or Methuselah as it’s commonly known — is also one of the universe’s oldest known stars.https://www.space.com/how-can-a-star-be-older-than-the-universe.html
7/30/2020 12:00 PMOur Milky Way galaxy was born in violence and scientists are still piecing together a picture of the cosmic crime scene. A crucial tool in that process is the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope, an instrument working to pinpoint the location of more than 1 billion stars. The information it gathers is letting astronomers understand how the Milky Way absorbed a second galaxy in the early days of the universe.https://www.space.com/early-milky-way-cannibalism.html
7/30/2020 2:00 PMMany varieties of armored predators ruled the oceans long before the Age of Dinosaurs. Among the most unusual were the eurypterids, the so-called “sea scorpions.” Some were the size of a human hand while others grew bigger than a man and were among the largest arthropods on Earth.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/gigantic-scorpions-hunted-in-ancient-seas/
7/30/2020 4:00 PMA new study identified 37 recently active volcanic structures on Venus. The study provides some of the best evidence yet that Venus is still a geologically active planet. A research paper on the work, which was conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland and the Institute of Geophysics at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, was published on July 20, 2020.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-scientists-volcanoes-venus.html
7/30/2020 6:00 PMAn investigational vaccine, mRNA-1273, designed to protect against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), was generally well tolerated and prompted neutralizing antibody activity in healthy adults, according to interim results.https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200714171338.htm
7/31/2020 8:00 AMResearchers from Kazan Federal University, Texas A&M University and Institute of Applied Physics (Russian Academy of Sciences) found ways to direct high frequency gamma radiation by means of acoustics.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-physicists-ways-gamma.html
7/31/2020 10:00 AMA team of researchers working at Hungary’s National Agricultural Research and Innovation Centre, Research Institute for Fisheries and Aquaculture, has accidentally bred a new kind of fish—dubbed the sturddlefish by some observers, it is a cross between an American Paddlefish and a Russian Sturgeon. In their paper published in the journal Genes, the group describes accidentally breeding the fish and what they learned by doing so.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-accidentally-sturddlefish.html
7/31/2020 12:00 PMScientists of Tomsk Polytechnic University jointly with teams from the University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague and Jan Evangelista Purkyne University in Ústí nad Labem have developed a new 2-D material to produce hydrogen, which is the basis of alternative energy. The material efficiently generates hydrogen molecules from fresh, salt, and polluted water by exposure to sunlight.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-material-hydrogen-salt-polluted.html
7/31/2020 2:00 PMA research team led by Osaka University investigated the formation ages of 59 lunar craters with a diameter of approximately 20 km using the Terrain Camera (TC) onboard the lunar orbiter spacecraft Kaguya.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-asteroid-shower-earth-moon-million-years.html
7/31/2020 4:00 PMThe Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) released today a comprehensive analysis of the largest three-dimensional map of the universe ever created, filling in the most significant gaps in our possible exploration of its history.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-astrophysicists-billion-years-universe-expansion.html
7/31/2020 6:00 PMSpiral galaxies such as our Milky Way can have sprawling magnetic fields. There are various theories about their formation, but so far the process is not well understood. An international research team has now analyzed the magnetic field of the Milky Way-like galaxy NGC 4217 in detail on the basis of radio astronomical observations and has discovered as yet unknown magnetic field structures. The data suggest that star formation and star explosions, so-called supernovae, are responsible for the visible structures.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-cosmic-magnetic-field-galaxy-ngc.html
8/1/2020 8:00 AMYou’ve probably noticed that our appetite for storing data is ravenous. Just three or four years ago, we thought a terabyte of storage space was ridiculously capacious. Now, multi-terabyte storage is an everyday thing. And it’s not just the data we want to stash away that we’re having trouble handling. It’s also the bits coursing through our processors and the power those straining processors require. We’re reaching the limits of our hardware, so only a breakthrough in efficiency that packs data into a much tinier form than it currently inhabits could break through the wall we’ve been rapidly approaching.https://bigthink.com/technology-innovation/data-on-single-atoms
8/1/2020 10:00 AMT10
8/1/2020 12:00 PMBlack holes have long served as fodder for science fiction — and for good reason. These unimaginably dense objects contain so much matter trapped in such a small volume that their gravity is strong enough to prevent even light from escaping their surfaces.https://astronomy.com/news/2019/07/what-are-intermediate-mass-black-holes
8/1/2020 2:00 PMAn invention may turn one of the most widely used materials for biomedical applications into wearable devices to help monitor heart health.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-option-heart-health.html
8/1/2020 4:00 PMScientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have furthered understanding of a barrier that can prevent doughnut-shaped fusion facilities known as tokamaks from operating at high efficiency by causing vital heat to be lost from them.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-birds-chirp-plasma-shouldnt-insight.html
8/1/2020 6:00 PMLaura Lewis and her team of researchers have been putting in late nights in their Boston University lab. Lewis ran tests until around 3:00 in the morning, then ended up sleeping in the next day. It was like she had jet lag, she says, without changing time zones. It’s not that Lewis doesn’t appreciate the merits of a good night’s sleep. She does. But when you’re trying to map what’s happening in a slumbering human’s brain, you end up making some sacrifices. “It’s this great irony of sleep research,” she says. “You’re constrained by when people sleep.”https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-now-know-how-sleep-cleans-toxins-from-the-brain/
8/2/2020 8:00 AMOver two dozen misidentified supermassive black holes have finally been revealed in a new, sky-scanning study. A team of researchers led by Erini Lambrides of Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in Baltimore, Maryland has spotted 28 supermassive black holes that have been masquerading as other cosmic objects using a host of telescopes including NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope. The team observed these black holes which lie 5 billion light-years or more away within the Chandra Deep Field-South (CDF-S), the deepest X-ray image ever taken.https://www.space.com/misidentified-supermassive-black-holes-discovered.html
8/2/2020 10:00 AMT10
8/2/2020 12:00 PMAstronomers have used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) to capture two planets orbiting a young Sun-like star. This is the first image of its kind. All other observations of planets around Sun-like stars have had only one world in them.https://www.iflscience.com/space/astronomers-take-firstever-image-of-a-multiplanet-system-around-a-young-sunlike-star/
8/2/2020 2:00 PMPlanetary impacts were simulated using the COSMA supercomputer at Durham University to study its effects on atmospheres.https://videos.space.com/m/xOvz8Oru/planetary-collisions-simulated-by-supercomputer
8/2/2020 4:00 PMIn the early morning hours of July 20 on Tanegashima, a small island just off the southern coast of Kyushu, Japan, a 174-foot rocket roared to life and lifted a spacecraft on the first leg of a 306-million-mile journey to Mars. The spacecraft itself, however, is not Japanese. Called al-Amal, or “Hope,” it was designed and managed by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) in the United Arab Emirates. Safely separated now from the Japanese rocket, the probe will fire its own thrusters to leave Earth orbit for Mars in about 28 days, arriving in February 2021 to complete the first interplanetary voyage initiated by an Arab country.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/07/uae-mars-mission-hope-aims-inspire-new-generation-space-scientists/
8/2/2020 6:00 PMNew discoveries about the disruption of condensates in the neurodevelopmental disorder Rett syndrome provide insights into how cells compartmentalize chromosomes as well as new potential paths for therapies.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-proteinsand-labscoming-rett-syndrome.html
8/3/2020 8:00 AMA cave in a remote part of Mexico was visited by humans around 30,000 years ago—15,000 years earlier than people were previously thought to have reached the Americas.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-earliest-humans-americas-oldest-hotel.html
8/3/2020 10:00 AMT10
8/3/2020 12:00 PMThe Sun is an ordinary star. It bathes the solar system with light and heat, making life possible on Earth. It’s as regular as clockwork, and it sets our daily life cycles in conjunction with Earth’s spin. Little wonder ancient peoples revered the Sun as a god. Yet the Sun will not always be steady and reliable. Billions of years from now, the Sun’s finale will turn Earth — and the entire inner solar system — into a very nasty place.https://astronomy.com/magazine/greatest-mysteries/2019/07/42-what-will-happen-to-the-sun
8/3/2020 2:00 PMAn animation to explain the (apparent) retrograde motion of Mars, using actual 2020 planet positions.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOjrPcD6Iuc
8/3/2020 4:00 PMIt sounds like pure sorcery: using diamonds to observe invisible power swirling and flowing through carefully crafted channels. But these diamonds are a reality. JQI Fellow Ronald Walsworth and Quantum Technology Center (QTC) Postdoctoral Associate Mark Ku, along with colleagues from several other institutions, including Professor Amir Yacoby and Postdoctoral Fellow Tony Zhou at Harvard, have developed a way to use diamonds to see the elusive details of electrical currents.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-diamonds-hidden-currents-graphene.html
8/3/2020 6:00 PMThe shapes of asteroids reflect interplay between their interior properties and the processes responsible for their formation and evolution as they journey through the Solar System. Prior to the OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer) mission, Earth-based radar imaging gave an overview of (101955) Bennu’s shape. Here, we construct a high-resolution shape model from OSIRIS-REx images. We find that Bennu’s top-like shape, considerable macroporosity, and prominent surface boulders suggest that it is a rubble pile.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6505705/
8/4/2020 8:00 AMAstronomers have conducted a detailed multiwavelength study of a distant protocluster of galaxies known as D1UD01. As a result, over 350 candidate galaxies have been detected in this protocluster.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-hundreds-candidate-galaxies-protocluster-d1ud01.html
8/4/2020 10:00 AMT10
8/4/2020 12:00 PMWhen a massive star reaches the end of its life, it ex­plodes as a huge supernova, ­leaving behind an incredibly dense central core — a neutron star. Although it is only the diameter of a city, it weighs around one million times more than the whole Earth.https://www.gsi.de/en/researchaccelerators/fair/research/cbm_inside_a_neutron_star.htm
8/4/2020 2:00 PMA drone prototype that mimics the aerobatic manoeuvres of one of the world’s fastest birds, the swift, is being developed by an international team of engineers in the latest example of biologically inspired flight.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-07-bird-plane-superman-wing-drone.html
8/4/2020 4:00 PMThe size of a star is a natural consequence of the balance between the inward pull of gravity and the outward pressure of radiation produced inside the star. When these two forces are balanced, the outer layers of the star are stable and said to be in hydrostatic equilibrium. In general, both the gravitational force and the energy generation rate are determined by the mass of a star. During most of their lives, stars burn hydrogen in their cores, and their structures are almost completely determined by their masses. Later in their lifetimes, energy is generated in a shell surrounding their cores, and the outer layers expand, such as in the red supergiant (for higher-mass stars) and red giant (for lower-mass stars) phases.https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2018/06/big-stars
8/4/2020 6:00 PMAs Mars exploration prepares for a rebirth, a European rover tunes up its gear for the challenges ahead.https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2020/07/Mars_rover_revival
8/5/2020 8:00 AMThe macroscopic world is full of walls, boxes, and barriers that keep things confined. But if you are small enough, where the laws of quantum mechanics rule, barriers don’t affect you.https://www.iflscience.com/physics/researchers-have-finally-measured-how-long-it-takes-for-an-atom-to-quantum-tunnel/
8/5/2020 10:00 AMT10
8/5/2020 12:00 PMOver the past few decades, research teams worldwide have developed a wide variety of computational tools and technological solutions. Quality-diversity (QD) optimization algorithms are an approach that can generate large collections of diverse and highly performing solutions to computational problems rather than identifying a single high-quality solution, as a more conventional optimization algorithm would.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-07-deep-grid-map-elites-algorithm-diverse-high.html
8/5/2020 2:00 PMResearchers have extracted and isolated antibodies from Covid-19 patients and found they are among the most potent way to neutralize SARS-CoV-2 in an animal model. If this holds true in people, it could be used as a way to treat those with the disease and inoculate those who are at risk.https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/antibodies-from-covid19-patients-can-neutralize-virus-in-others-animal-model-study-shows/
8/5/2020 4:00 PMThermosets, which include epoxies, polyurethanes, and rubber used for tires, are found in many products that have to be durable and heat-resistant, such as cars or electrical appliances. One drawback to these materials is that they typically cannot be easily recycled or broken down after use, because the chemical bonds holding them together are stronger than those found in other materials such as thermoplastics.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-chemists-tough-plastics-recyclable.html
8/5/2020 6:00 PMIf you stargaze on a clear winter night, it’s hard to miss the constellation Orion the Hunter, with his shield in one arm and the other arm stretched high to the heavens. A bright red dot called Betelgeuse marks Orion’s shoulder, and this star’s strange dimming has captivated skygazers for thousands of years. Aboriginal Australians may have even worked it into their oral histories.https://astronomy.com/news/2020/02/when-betelgeuse-goes-supernova-what-will-it-look-like-from-earth
8/6/2020 8:00 AMMeteorologists are using supercomputers and the latest data about climate phenomena to predict temperature and precipitation four weeks in the future.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/accurate-weather-forecasts-28-days-out/
8/6/2020 10:00 AMT10
8/6/2020 12:00 PMA new study reveals widespread illegal fishing by dark fleets—vessels that do not publicly broadcast their location or appear in public monitoring systems. These fleets are operating in the waters between the Koreas, Japan and Russia, some of the world’s most disputed and poorly monitored waters.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-exposes-rampant-illegal-fishing-north.html
8/6/2020 2:00 PMAn unusual rock found in 1989 in a garden in Blaubeuren, Germany has finally been shared with scientists, who’ve dubbed it a “sensational discovery.” The stony meteorite is thought to have fallen to Earth hundreds of years ago, but has spent the last 31 years left lying in the garden. In January 2020 its existence was reported to the Institute of Planetary Research at the German Aerospace Centre.https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2020/07/16/sensational-discovery-as-germanys-largest-ever-meteorite-is-found-in-a-garden/
8/6/2020 4:00 PMThe immune systems of mammals—including humans—might struggle to detect and respond to germs from other planets, new research suggests.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-mammal-cells-struggle-space-germs.html
8/6/2020 6:00 PMThe local curvature of a wall has been identified as the simple building ‘rule’ that termites use to build their complex nests, according to new research conducted by the University of Roehampton.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-termites.html
8/7/2020 8:00 AMNew research suggests that graphene—made in a specific way- could be used to make more durable hydrogen fuel cells for cars. In the study, scientists produced graphene via a special, scalable technique and used it to develop hydrogen fuel cell catalysts. The research team, involving scientists from Queen Mary University of London and University College London (UCL), showed that this new type of graphene-based catalyst was more durable than commercially available catalysts and matched their performance.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-scientists-material-longer-lasting-fuel-cells.html
8/7/2020 10:00 AMT10
8/7/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/07/maxar-progress-ppe-gateway/
8/7/2020 2:00 PMhttps://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2012/12/colliding-body
8/7/2020 4:00 PMAn international team led by researchers at Princeton University has uncovered a new class of magnet that exhibits novel quantum effects that extend to room temperature.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-scientists-topological-magnet-exotic-quantum.html
8/7/2020 6:00 PMChina’s first fully homegrown Mars mission is on its way to the Red Planet. The Tianwen-1 mission launched atop a Long March 5 rocket from Hainan Island’s Wenchang Satellite Launch Center July 23.https://www.space.com/china-tianwen-1-mars-mission-launch.html
8/8/2020 8:00 AMOn its way inbound for a Dec. 26, 2019, flyby of Jupiter, NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew in the proximity of the north pole of the ninth-largest object in the solar system, the moon Ganymede. The infrared imagery collected by the spacecraft’s Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument provides the first infrared mapping of the massive moon’s northern frontier. Larger than the planet Mercury, Ganymede consists primarily of water ice. Its composition contains fundamental clues for understanding the evolution of the 79 Jovian moons from the time of their formation to today.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-juno-takes-first-images-of-jovian-moon-ganymedes-north-pole
8/8/2020 10:00 AMT10
8/8/2020 12:00 PMWork has begun on an ambitious new mission that will carry a cutting-edge 8.4-foot (2.5-meter) telescope high into the stratosphere on a balloon. Tentatively planned to launch in December 2023 from Antarctica, ASTHROS (short for Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution Observations at Submillimeter-wavelengths) will spend about three weeks drifting on air currents above the icy southern continent and achieve several firsts along the way.https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7712
8/8/2020 2:00 PMAncient light from the Big Bang has revealed a precise new estimate for the universe’s age: 13.77 billion years, give or take 40 million years. The new estimate, based on data from an array of telescopes in the Chilean Atacama Desert, also weighs in on one of the most important disagreements in astrophysics: How fast is the universe expanding?https://www.livescience.com/universe-expansion-atacama-hubble-constant-measurement.html
8/8/2020 4:00 PMThe lack of human activity during lockdown caused human-linked vibrations in the Earth to drop by an average of 50% between March and May 2020.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-covid-lockdown-global-reduction-human-linked.html
8/8/2020 6:00 PMWhat would you do if a 1,000 pound leopard seal attempted to feed you dead penguins? While it sounds highly improbable, this actually happened to a National Geographic photographer while on assignment in Antarctica.https://roaring.earth/feed-photographer/
8/9/2020 8:00 AMBarometric pressure over the ocean is vital to weather prediction on land. The Saildrone Forecast weather app for iOS now includes global air pressure as an animated overlay.https://www.saildrone.com/news/measuring-barometric-pressure-southern-ocean
8/9/2020 10:00 AMT10
8/9/2020 12:00 PMJapan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft is nearly home. Having collected samples from the asteroid Ryugu last year, the spacecraft is just months away from returning them to Earth. The samples contain material that likely dates back to the dawn of the solar system, 4.6 billion years ago. They could provide fresh insights into how celestial bodies came to be and even how life on Earth began. But before all that, there is the small matter of getting Hayabusa2’s precious cargo down from the harsh vacuum of space and safely into scientists’ hands.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/japan-prepares-for-hayabusa2s-daring-return-to-earth/
8/9/2020 2:00 PMThe genome of the phylloxera, an insect that caused plagues that devastated European vines in the 19th century, has been deciphered by an international team involving researchers Miquel Barberà and David Martínez, from the Institute for Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio), center of the University of Valencia, and the CSIC.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-genome-phylloxera-devastated-european-vines.html
8/9/2020 4:00 PMEven by the standards of quantum physicists, strange metals are just plain odd. The materials are related to high-temperature superconductors and have surprising connections to the properties of black holes. Electrons in strange metals dissipate energy as fast as they’re allowed to under the laws of quantum mechanics, and the electrical resistivity of a strange metal, unlike that of ordinary metals, is proportional to the temperature.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-quantum-physicists-mystery-strange-metals.html
8/9/2020 6:00 PMThere are many types of light—some visible and some invisible to the human eye. For example, our eyes and brain don’t have the tools to process ultraviolet light when it hits our eyes, making it invisible. But there is another type of light that is invisible simply because it never reaches our eyes. When light hits certain surfaces, part of it sticks and remains behind rather than being transmitted or scattered away. This type of light is called near-field light.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-near-field-advances-particle-high-resolution.html
8/10/2020 8:00 AMA new study published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface saw British and Spanish researchers take a deep dive into the combs of Tetragonula, a stingless bee from Southeast Asia and Australia, to understand how, without some sort of comb blueprint, these animals could so consistently create these complex structures. They found that the bizarre spiral shape of their nests, which have long been a source of confusion for scientists, are crafted in a pattern that is similar at a molecular level to crystal development.https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/this-stingless-bee-builds-combs-using-the-same-structural-development-that-forms-crystals/
8/10/2020 10:00 AMT10
8/10/2020 12:00 PMThe self-eating process in embryonic stem cells known as chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA) and a related metabolite may serve as promising new therapeutic targets to repair or regenerate damaged cells and organs, Penn Medicine researchers show in a new study.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-self-eating-stem-cells-key-regenerative.html
8/10/2020 2:00 PMIn the fall of 2022, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft will reach its destination: asteroid Didymos and its small moonlet, named Dimorphos. The mission, directed for NASA by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, is a hypervelocity test crash, a one-way trip to demonstrate a planetary defense strategy to thwart an asteroid from hitting Earth.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/predicting-the-unpredictable-the-dynamics-of-dart-s-dive-into-an-asteroid
8/10/2020 4:00 PMUntangling the origins of Beelzebufo — the giant frog that lived alongside the dinosaurs — turns out to be one of the most bedeviling problems in the history of amphibians.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nCPbPPrQxQ
8/10/2020 6:00 PMIn 1928, the shy, brilliant physicist Paul Dirac predicted the existence of antimatter. When it was actually discovered 7 years later, Dirac should have become a household name. But his yearning to avoid publicity — he almost turned down the Nobel Prize — discouraged media attention, and he’s known today only among science geeks.https://astronomy.com/magazine/weirdest-objects/2015/11/8-milky-way-antimatter-fountain
8/11/2020 8:00 AMA team of researchers at the University of Toronto has found a way to measure how long quantum tunneling takes to happen. In their paper, the group describes experiments they conducted and the result they found when attempting to measure how long quantum tunneling takes under certain circumstances.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-quantum-tunneling.html
8/11/2020 10:00 AMhttps://www.popsci.com/mosquitoes-probably-remember-when-you-try-to-swat-them/
8/11/2020 12:00 PMFlorida State University researchers have new insight into the tiny packages that cells use to move molecules, a structure that is key to cellular metabolism, drug delivery and more.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-biologists-cells-resources.html
8/11/2020 2:00 PMNew genome-editing technologies developed by researchers in J. Keith Joung’s laboratory at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have the potential to help understand disease-associated genetic mutations that are based on C-to-G (cytosine to guanine) single base changes. The new base editors are also designed to minimize unintended (“off-target”) mutations that could potentially cause undesirable side effects.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-crispr-dna-base-editor-landscape.html
8/11/2020 4:00 PMFrequency combs are becoming one of the great enabling technologies of the 21st century. High-precision atomic clocks, and high-precision spectroscopy are just two technologies that have benefited from the development of highly precise frequency combs. However, the original frequency comb sources required a room full of equipment. And it turns out that if you suggest that a room full of delicate equipment is perfect for a commercial application, the development engineer makes a beeline for the nearest exit.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-silicon-core-fishbone-waveguide-frequency.html
8/11/2020 6:00 PMA team of researchers from Seoul National University and Eumam Middle School has developed a type of ionic spiderweb that is able to imitate dual functions found with real spiderwebs. In their paper, the group describes their spiderwebs and possible uses for them.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-ionic-spiderwebs-imitate-dual-functions.html
8/12/2020 8:00 AMAntibiotic resistance poses a significant threat to human health on a global scale. It has been predicted that resistant infections will cause 10 million deaths per year by 2050. Given that antibiotics are crucial in many areas of medicine, it is important to understand how antibiotic use influences the likelihood that resistance will emerge in response to treatment.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-scientists-key-restricting-antibiotic-resistant.html
8/12/2020 10:00 AMAlaska is getting wetter. A new study spells out what that means for the permafrost that underlies about 85% of the state, and the consequences for Earth’s global climate.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-alaska-wetter-bad-news-permafrost.html
8/12/2020 12:00 PMExamining the structure of a sunflower stem as it matures can help both the plant scientist and biomaterials engineer. That’s the premise that Anamika Prasad, an assistant professor in South Dakota State University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, is putting into practice.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-sunflower-stem-growth.html
8/12/2020 2:00 PMCell division is a fundamental process that organisms need to reproduce, grow, and make repairs. But when an error disrupts this complex biological process, cellular abnormalities can lead to diseases, such as cancer, where cells are enabled to grow and divide out of control.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-cell-imaging-mathematical-cancer.html
8/12/2020 4:00 PMhttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2020/03/what-these-art-photos-say-about-climate-change/
8/12/2020 6:00 PMThe magnetic properties of a chromium halide can be tuned by manipulating the non-magnetic atoms in the material, a team, led by Boston College researchers, reports in the most recent edition of Science Advances.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-non-magnetic-atoms-chromium-halide-enables.html
8/13/2020 8:00 AMScientists from the University of Sheffield have found that genetic mutations in MRSA allow it to evolve and become more resistant to antibiotics such as penicillin.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-genetic-mutations-super-bug-highly.html
8/13/2020 10:00 AMA new study led by researchers at The Australian National University (ANU) provides a clearer snapshot of conditions during the last ice age—when global ice sheets were at their peak—and could even lead to better models for future climate projections.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-historic-carbon-dioxide-decline-clues.html
8/13/2020 12:00 PMWhen it launches in the mid-2020s, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will create enormous panoramic pictures of space in unprecedented detail. The mission’s wide field of view will enable scientists to conduct sweeping cosmic surveys, yielding a wealth of new information about the universe.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/ground-system-for-nasa-s-roman-completes-major-review
8/13/2020 2:00 PMConverting carbon dioxide to methanol, a potentially renewable alternative fuel, offers an opportunity to simultaneously form an alternative fuel and cut down on carbon dioxide emissions.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-tandem-catalytic-efficiently-carbon-dioxide.html
8/13/2020 4:00 PMUniversity of Rochester researchers are setting a new standard when it comes to producing ultrafast laser pulses over a broader range of wavelengths than traditional laser sources.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-powerful-versatile-ultrafast-laser-pulse.html
8/13/2020 6:00 PMIn the pursuit of a rechargeable battery that can power electric vehicles (EVs) for hundreds of miles on a single charge, scientists have endeavored to replace the graphite anodes currently used in EV batteries with lithium metal anodes.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-07-battery-breakthrough-boost-electric-flight.html
8/14/2020 8:00 AMAfter five years of peering into the deepest reaches of space, researchers have released what they call the “largest three-dimensional map of the universe” ever. The mind-boggling map is the result of an ongoing project called the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) — an ambitious, international quest to map the expansion of the observable universe, and hopefully solve a few cosmic conundrums in the process. With this newest update, the project has mapped and measured more than 2 million galaxies, stretching from our Milky Way to ancient objects more than 11 billion light-years away.https://www.space.com/largest-3d-universe-map.html
8/14/2020 10:00 AMAn observatory affiliated with NASA’s quest to identify potentially hazardous asteroids spotted something equally speedy but not quite as natural: a spacecraft bound for Mars.https://www.space.com/china-mars-tianwen-1-spacecraft-nasa-photo.html
8/14/2020 12:00 PMOne trap-jaw ant from 99 million-year-old Burmese amber is found with an elaborate head structure, specialized to trap oversized prey.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/the-trap-jaw-unicorn-ant-of-cretaceous/
8/14/2020 2:00 PMThe search for life on Mars shouldn’t focus exclusively on the distant past, some researchers say. Four billion years ago, the Martian surface was apparently quite habitable, featuring rivers, lakes and even a deep ocean. Indeed, some astrobiologists view ancient Mars as an even better cradle for life than Earth was.https://www.space.com/could-mars-support-life-today.html
8/14/2020 4:00 PMIn roughly 5 billion years, the Sun will run out of energy and drastically alter the solar system. Oceans will be baked dry. Entire planets will be consumed. And long-icy worlds will finally enjoy their day in the Sun.https://astronomy.com/news/2020/02/the-suns-death-could-mean-new-life-in-the-outer-solar-system
8/14/2020 6:00 PMhttps://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2013/10/lagrangian-points
8/15/2020 8:00 AMhttps://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2019/02/neutron-star-matter
8/15/2020 10:00 AMWhen scientists peered beneath the wrappings of two small ancient Egyptian mummies thought to hold human hearts, they were taken aback: Not only were there no noticeable hearts inside, but the remains were not even human. Rather, one of the mummies is tightly packed with grain and mud — a so-called corn or grain mummy — while the other holds the remains of a bird, possibly a falcon, that is missing a body part and several organs, the researchers found.https://www.livescience.com/ancient-egypt-grain-mummy.html
8/15/2020 12:00 PMAn optical fiber made of agar has been produced at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. This device is edible, biocompatible and biodegradable. It can be used in vivo for body structure imaging, localized light delivery in phototherapy or optogenetics (e.g., stimulating neurons with light to study neural circuits in a living brain), and localized drug delivery.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-optical-fiber-gel-derived-marine.html
8/15/2020 2:00 PMResearchers have theorized that a zebra’s stripes serve multiple purposes – one of them being to deter insects. To test the theory, and to possibly help cows, they painted a number of cows with their own stripes – and in turn reduced their number of insect bites by over 50%.https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0223447
8/15/2020 4:00 PMStonehenge, a Neolithic wonder in southern England, has vexed historians and archaeologists for centuries with its many mysteries: How was it built? What purpose did it serve? Where did its towering sandstone boulders come from?https://phys.org/news/2020-07-mystery-stonehenge-iconic-boulders.html
8/15/2020 6:00 PMNASA’s next Mars rover, Perseverance, will explore the Red Planet with the aid of some of the most precise Martian maps ever created.https://www.space.com/mars-2020-rover-perseverance-best-martian-maps.html
8/16/2020 8:00 AMA breakthrough in fertility science by researchers from Bristol and Mexico has shattered the universally accepted view of how sperm ‘swim’. More than three hundred years after Antonie van Leeuwenhoek used one of the earliest microscopes to describe human sperm as having a “tail, which, when swimming, lashes with a snakelike movement, like eels in water”, scientists have revealed this is an optical illusion.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-human-sperm-centuries-old-assumption.html
8/16/2020 10:00 AMThe St. Patrick Bay ice caps on the Hazen Plateau of northeastern Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada, have disappeared, according to NASA satellite imagery. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) scientists and colleagues predicted via a 2017 paper in The Cryosphere that the ice caps would melt out completely within the next five years, and recent images from NASA’s Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) have confirmed that this prediction was accurate.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-canadian-ice-caps-scientific.html
8/16/2020 12:00 PMWe may never resurrect a living dinosaur from DNA in amber. But we can accurately reconstruct the anatomy of other beautiful little creatures lying trapped for the past 99 million years. Scientists are doing this now, with a set of unfortunate Burmese lizards.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/amber-trapped-lizard-fossils-reveal-lost-world/
8/16/2020 2:00 PMTexas researchers from the University of Houston, Baylor University and Texas A&M University have discovered evidence for why the earth cooled dramatically 13,000 years ago, dropping temperatures by about 3 degrees Centigrade.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-texas-cave-sediment-upends-meteorite.html
8/16/2020 4:00 PMA material composed of two one-atom-thick layers of carbon has grabbed the attention of physicists worldwide for its intriguing—and potentially exploitable—conductive properties.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-physicists-misaligned-carbon-sheets-yield.html
8/16/2020 6:00 PMThe first sign that Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity was correct has made a repeat appearance, this time near a supermassive black hole.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/star-orbiting-milky-way-giant-black-hole-confirms-einstein-was-right
8/17/2020 8:00 AMOur home galaxy is even more twisted than we thought. Astronomers have created a 3D map of the Milky Way’s disk revealing that it is warped, not flat.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/08/milky-way-more-warped-astronomers-thought
8/17/2020 10:00 AMBack to the Future, The Terminator, The Time Machine, all of these stories share a central theme where traveling through time is a dangerous proposition that could destroy the very fabric of our reality. It’s called the butterfly effect. The big idea is that you’d step out of your time travel machine and accidentally step on a bug. Because this bug doesn’t exist… maybe a frog goes hungry and dies. And maybe that frog was supposed to hop on a sabre-tooth tiger’s face at exactly the right moment so the cave person from which our greatest leader will descend can escape death. Now, because that bug is dead, the cave man didn’t live and our planet is a nuclear wasteland when you return to the “present.”https://thenextweb.com/science/2020/07/31/quantum-physicists-say-time-travelers-dont-have-to-worry-about-the-butterfly-effect/
8/17/2020 12:00 PMA collaboration led by the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and McMaster University has led to the discovery and diagnosis of an aggressive malignant bone cancer—an osteosarcoma—for the first time ever in a dinosaur. No malignant cancers (tumours that can spread throughout the body and have severe health implications) have ever been documented in dinosaurs previously.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-malignant-cancer-dinosaur.html
8/17/2020 2:00 PMApplying shockwaves can improve conditions for fluid mixing in supersonic combustion engines, paving the way for flights at speeds five times faster than the speed of sound.https://phys.org/news/2020-07-jolt-mars.html
8/17/2020 4:00 PMMillimeter by millimeter, your hair is building a record of your diet. As hair strands are built from amino acids that come from your food, they preserve the chemical traces of the protein in that food. It’s a strong enough record to show whether you prefer veggie burgers or double bacon cheeseburgers.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-hair-haircut.html
8/17/2020 6:00 PMAstronomers have discovered what can happen when a giant black hole does not intervene in the life of a galaxy cluster. Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes they have shown that passive black hole behavior may explain a remarkable torrent of star formation occurring in a distant cluster of galaxies.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-black-hole-job.html
8/18/2020 8:00 AMThe aptly-named titanosaurs were the biggest creatures to walk the Earth yet they had to grow up from rather tiny beginnings. From group nesting in Argentina to fast-growing babies that succumbed to Madagascan droughts, these fossils have left their mark and are helping scientists to uncover the secrets of these little giants.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/from-egg-to-enormous-dinosaur-the-making-of-a-titanosaur/
8/18/2020 10:00 AMA turtle named Inaechelys pernambucensis managed to survive not long after a mass extinction wiped out non-avian dinosaurs.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/brazilian-side-necked-turtle-thrived-after-dinosaur-extinction/
8/18/2020 12:00 PMNew results achieved by combining big data captured by the Subaru Telescope and the power of machine learning have discovered a galaxy with an extremely low 1.6% oxygen abundance, breaking the previous record of the lowest abundance. The measured oxygen abundance suggests that most of the stars in this galaxy formed very recently.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-machine-early-galaxy.html
8/18/2020 2:00 PMA team of scientists led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have discovered the parameters that determine the efficiency of a class of low-cost catalysts called spinel oxides—a discovery that breaks a bottleneck in the extraction of hydrogen from water through electrolysis, the process of splitting water with electricity.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-scientists-catalysts-efficient.html
8/18/2020 4:00 PMIf you want the clearest view of the night sky, you’ll have to pack a warm jacket. Dome A, or Dome Argus, an ice dome perched high on the Antarctic Plateau, could be the ideal place to get a clear view of the stars from Earth, according to a new study conducted by an international team of researchers. A telescope situated at that remote location, thought to be the naturally coldest place on Earth, could reveal clearer, better night sky views than the same telescope located anywhere else.https://www.space.com/best-night-sky-telescope-site-dome-a-antarctica.html
8/18/2020 6:00 PMA large number of the valley networks scarring Mars’s surface were carved by water melting beneath glacial ice, not by free-flowing rivers as previously thought, according to new UBC research. The findings effectively throw cold water on the dominant “warm and wet ancient Mars” hypothesis, which postulates that rivers, rainfall and oceans once existed on the red planet.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-early-mars-ice-sheets-rivers.html
8/19/2020 8:00 AMScientists have found a novel way to prevent pesky magnetic bubbles in plasma from interfering with fusion reactions—delivering a potential way to improve the performance of fusion energy devices. And it comes from managing radio frequency (RF) waves to stabilize the magnetic bubbles, which can expand and create disruptions that can limit the performance of ITER, the international facility under construction in France to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion power.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-scientists-method-fusion-reactions.html
8/19/2020 10:00 AMThere are few animals more bizarre than the anglerfish, a species that has so much trouble finding a mate that when the male and female do connect underwater, males actually fuse their tissue with the females for life. After the merger, the two share a single respiratory and digestive system.https://www.wired.com/story/the-anglerfish-deleted-its-immune-system-to-fuse-with-its-mate/
8/19/2020 12:00 PMThe World Health Organization has warned that aerosol transmission of COVID-19 is being underestimated. If aerosol spread is confirmed to be significant, as suspected, we will need to reconsider guidelines on social distancing, ventilation systems and shared spaces.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-droplet-humans-doesnt-airflow.html
8/19/2020 2:00 PMThe nice thing about being a frog is that you don’t have to chew your food—just gulp, and down the hatch. The problematic thing about being a frog is that you don’t have to chew your food, which means that if you’ve happened to nab the aquatic beetle Regimbartia attenuata, your food might come out the other end in an undesirable fashion: alive and literally kicking.https://www.wired.com/story/frog-eats-beetle-beetle-crawls-through-guts/
8/19/2020 4:00 PMScientists have developed a new prediction of the shape of the bubble surrounding our solar system using a model developed with data from NASA missions. For those who can’t wait – the solar system is croissant shaped.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/uncovering-our-solar-system-s-shape
8/19/2020 6:00 PMTo enable data transmission speeds that surpass the 5th Generation (5G) standards for telecommunications, scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and Osaka University in Japan have built a new chip using a concept called photonic topological insulators.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-scientists-ultra-high-speed-terahertz-wireless-chip.html
8/20/2020 8:00 AMCatalysts speed up chemical reactions and form the backbone of many industrial processes. For example, they are essential in transforming heavy oil into gasoline or jet fuel. Today, catalysts are involved in over 80 percent of all manufactured products.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-electrocatalyst-carbon-dioxide-liquid-fuel.html
8/20/2020 10:00 AMIn space, nobody can hear you scream, but with the right equipment, it is possible to detect a roar. That’s what scientists discovered back in 2006 when they began to look for distant signals in the universe using a complex instrument fixed to a huge balloon that was sent to space. The instrument was able to pick up radio waves from the heat of distant stars, but what came through that year was nothing short of astounding. As the instrument listened from a height of about 23 miles (37 kilometers), it picked up a signal that was six-times louder than expected by cosmologists. Because it was too loud to be early stars and far greater than the predicted combined radio emission from distant galaxies, the powerful signal caused great puzzlement. And scientists still don’t know what is causing it, even today.https://www.space.com/space-roar-loudest-sound-in-the-universe.html
8/20/2020 12:00 PMA fossil called Tanystropheus was first described in 1852, and it’s been puzzling scientists ever since. At one point, paleontologists thought it was a flying pterosaur, like a pterodactyl, and that its long, hollow bones were phalanges in the finger that supported the wing. Later on, they figured out that those were elongated neck bones, and that it was a twenty-foot-long reptile with a ten-foot neck: three times as long as its torso. Scientists still weren’t sure if it lived on land or in the water, and they didn’t know if smaller specimens were juveniles or a completely different species—until now. By CT-scanning the fossils’ crushed skulls and digitally reassembling them, researchers found evidence that the animals were water-dwelling, and by examining the growth rings in bones, determined that the big and little Tanystropheus were separate species that could live alongside each other without competing because they hunted different prey.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-fossil-mystery-super-long-necked-reptiles-ocean.html
8/20/2020 2:00 PMA new way to treat acid mine drainage (AMD) could help transform the environmental pollution problem into an important domestic source of the critical rare earth elements needed to produce technology ranging from smart phones to fighter jets, according to Penn State scientists.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-acid-drainage-treatment-valuable-critical.html
8/20/2020 4:00 PMOur solar system’s comets are believed to have delivered a wealth of material to early Earth. Among the icy visitors’ suspected gifts were rare gases, small amounts of water, and organic material — all of which could have helped terrestrial life form and evolve. But while ancient Earth received only a moderate influx of comets, any planets around young nearby star Eta Corvi are likely raking in cometary currency.https://astronomy.com/magazine/news/2020/07/is-eta-corvi-a-window-into-our-past
8/20/2020 6:00 PMAn international team of researchers led by Queen Mary University of London have discovered that microorganisms buried in sediment beneath the seafloor can survive on less energy than was previously known to support life. The study has implications for understanding the limit of life on Earth and the potential for life elsewhere.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-reveals-energy-limit-life-earth.html
8/21/2020 8:00 AMIf we wish to colonize another world, finding a planet with a gravitational field that humans can survive and thrive under will be crucial. If its gravity is too strong our blood will be pulled down into our legs, our bones might break, and we could even be pinned helplessly to the ground. Finding the gravitational limit of the human body is something that’s better done before we land on a massive new planet.https://astronomy.com/news/2018/09/gravity-to-the-max
8/21/2020 10:00 AMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=339435517218026
8/21/2020 12:00 PMBy formulating positively charged fluorescent dyes into a new class of materials called small-molecule ionic isolation lattices (SMILES), a compound’s brilliant glow can be seamlessly transferred to a solid, crystalline state, researchers reported August 6 in the journal Chem. The advance overcomes a long-standing barrier to developing fluorescent solids, resulting in the brightest known materials in existence.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-chemists-brightest-ever-fluorescent-materials.html
8/21/2020 2:00 PMSupermassive black holes dot our universe, monstrous gravity wells that bind galaxies together and wreath themselves in whirling cocoons of dust that emit bright X-ray beams. Sometimes, bright columns of matter burst up from their poles, forming jets visible across space. And now some scientists suspect these gravitational monsters might host blanets — tens of thousands of them. Nope, that’s not a typo: Scientists suggest calling these black hole planets by the name “blanets.”https://www.space.com/black-hole-planets-blanets.html
8/21/2020 4:00 PMTaking advantage of a total lunar eclipse, astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have detected Earth’s own brand of sunscreen—ozone—in our atmosphere. This method simulates how astronomers and astrobiology researchers will search for evidence of life beyond Earth by observing potential “biosignatures” on exoplanets (planets around other stars).https://phys.org/news/2020-08-hubble-earth-proxy-oxygen-potentially.html
8/21/2020 6:00 PMA team of researchers from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have developed an algorithm through machine learning that helps predict sites of DNA methylation—a process that can change the activity of DNA without changing its overall structure—and could identify disease-causing mechanisms that would otherwise be missed by conventional screening methods.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-algorithm-deep-potential-therapeutic-genome.html
8/22/2020 8:00 AMThere are few aspects of life where you can fail seven out of 10 times and still be considered great at what you do. With a 30 percent score on the MCAT, you wouldn’t get into medical school. You’d likely lose money if you only won 30 percent of your Super Bowl bets. But in baseball, if you get a hit 30 percent of the time you step up to the plate, you might be headed to the Hall of Fame—and that’s because it’s perhaps the most difficult thing to do in any major sport.https://www.popsci.com/story/science/why-is-hitting-a-baseball-so-hard/
8/22/2020 10:00 AMFifty million years ago, a throng of thimble-sized fish met its untimely end. Now, a team of Japanese scientists may have uncovered the pristinely-preserved mass grave that immortalized these doomed creatures’ final moments.https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/fossil-school-fish/
8/22/2020 12:00 PMUsing the power of the National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world’s highest-energy laser system, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and an international team of collaborators have developed an experimental capability for measuring the basic properties of matter, such as the equation of state (EOS), at the highest pressures thus far achieved in a controlled laboratory experiment.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-eos-pressures-stellar-evolution.html
8/22/2020 2:00 PMNASA’s first asteroid sampling spacecraft is making final preparations to grab a sample from asteroid Bennu’s surface. Next week, the OSIRIS-REx mission will conduct a second rehearsal of its touchdown sequence, practicing the sample collection activities one last time before touching down on Bennu this fall.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-osiris-rex-rehearsal-asteroid-bennu.html
8/22/2020 4:00 PMIn findings published Aug. 6 in the journal Current Biology, researchers from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of Rennes in France have unveiled a stunning 99-million-year-old fossil pristinely preserving an enigmatic insect predator from the Cretaceous Period—a ‘hell ant’ (haidomyrmecine)—as it embraced its unsuspecting final victim, an extinct relative of the cockroach known as Caputoraptor elegans.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-fossil-discovery-ancient-hell-ants.html
8/22/2020 6:00 PMVast areas of the Martian night sky pulse in ultraviolet light, according to images from NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft. The results are being used to illuminate complex circulation patterns in the Martian atmosphere.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-nasa-maven-martian-night-sky.html
8/23/2020 8:00 AMAn international team of solar physicists, including academics from Northumbria University, in Newcastle upon Tyne, has recently measured the global magnetic field of the outer most layer of the Sun’s atmosphere, the solar corona, for the first time.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-global-magnetic-field-solar-corona.html
8/23/2020 10:00 AMA new analysis of ancient genomes suggests that different branches of the human family tree interbred multiple times, and that some humans carry DNA from an archaic, unknown ancestor. Melissa Hubisz and Amy Williams of Cornell University and Adam Siepel of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory report these findings in a study published 6th August in PLOS Genetics.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-dna-ancient-unidentified-ancestor-humans.html
8/23/2020 12:00 PMA team of researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research has found evidence suggesting that if greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed, future heat waves could kill millions of people across the globe. In their paper published on the NBER website, the group describes how they compared heat related deaths in several countries during past heatwaves with projected future temperatures to learn more about possible deaths in the future.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-future-millions.html
8/23/2020 2:00 PMUniversity of Central Florida researchers have developed a new type of laser beam that doesn’t follow long-held principles about how light refracts and travels.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-class-laser-doesnt-laws-refraction.html
8/23/2020 4:00 PMAt the end of the dinosaur age, gigantic beasts roamed the southern half of the North American continent. From Utah to Texas and New Mexico, these giants shook the earth under their immense weight, towering above predators and neighbors alike. It was the reign of Alamosaurus, America’s biggest dinosaur.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/remember-the-alamosaurus-america-s-armored-dinosaur-titan/
8/23/2020 6:00 PMFor years, scientists have attributed animal behavior to the coordinated activities of neuronal cells and its circuits of neurons, known as the neuronal network (NN). However, researchers are pushing the boundaries in understanding animal behavior through the integration of gene regulation.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-gene-regulatory-networks-animal-behavior.html
8/24/2020 8:00 AMDiscovering antiviral and anticancer drugs will soon be faster and cheaper thanks to new research from Simon Fraser University chemist Robert Britton and his international team. For the past 50 years, scientists have used manmade, synthetic and nucleoside analogues to create drug therapies for diseases that involve the cellular division and/or the viral reproduction of infected cells. These diseases include hepatitis, herpes simplex, HIV and cancer.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-fast-tracks-drug-treatments-viral-infections.html
8/24/2020 10:00 AMA supersensitive dopamine detector can help in the early diagnosis of several disorders that result in too much or too little dopamine, according to a group led by Penn State and including Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and universities in China and Japan.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-highly-sensitive-dopamine-detector-d.html
8/24/2020 12:00 PMPurdue University innovators are working on inventions to use micro-chip technology in implantable devices and other wearable products such as smart watches to improve biomedical devices, including those used to monitor people with glaucoma and heart disease.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-08-implantable-transmitter-wireless-option-biomedical.html
8/24/2020 2:00 PMhttps://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-close-up-electron-microscopy/
8/24/2020 4:00 PMIn research published in Science Advances, a group led by scientists from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS) have used the principle of magneto-rotation coupling to suppress the transmission of sound waves on the surface of a film in one direction while allowing them to travel in the other. This could lead to the development of acoustic rectifiers—devices that allow waves to propagate preferentially in one direction, with potential applications in communications technology.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-scientists-principles-creation-acoustic-diode.html
8/24/2020 6:00 PMWith the help of two extremely bright quasars located more than 7 billion light-years away, researchers recently bolstered the case for quantum entanglement — a phenomenon Einstein described as “spooky action at a distance” — by eliminating one classical alternative: The freedom-of-choice loophole.https://astronomy.com/news/2018/08/distant-quasars-confirm-quantum-entanglement
8/25/2020 8:00 AMWhen NASA’s powerful Perseverance rover lifted off into space on July 30, a satellite and a robotic telescope caught unique views of the mission on its way to Mars.https://www.space.com/mars-perseverance-mission-spotted-after-launch.html
8/25/2020 10:00 AMMale brown widow spiders seem to have a death wish: they prefer mating partners that are more likely to cannibalize them, an unusual study recently revealed.https://roaring.earth/male-brown-widows-prefer-mating-with-older-females-that-cannibalize-them/
8/25/2020 12:00 PMThirty thousand years ago, a dead star on the other side of the Milky Way belched out a powerful mixture of radio and X-ray energy. On April 28, 2020, that belch swept over Earth, triggering alarms at observatories around the world.https://www.space.com/fast-radio-burst-magnetar-milky-way.html
8/25/2020 2:00 PMThe dwarf planet Ceres—long believed to be a barren space rock—is an ocean world with reservoirs of sea water beneath its surface, the results of a major exploration mission showed Monday.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-dwarf-planet-ceres-ocean-world.html
8/25/2020 4:00 PMNASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory knew flying cubesats all the way to Mars was a long shot. Its twin Mars Cube One spacecraft had to travel hundreds of millions of kilometers on their own propulsion and relay data from the agency’s Insight lander as it descended onto the Red Planet.https://spacenews.com/marco-shows-interplanetary-cubesats-possible-but-not-easy/
8/25/2020 6:00 PMWhile greenhouse gas emissions plummeted as the world locked down in response to the coronavirus pandemic, such dips will do “nothing” to slow climate change unless society moves away from fossil fuels, researchers have found.https://www.space.com/coronavirus-emissions-drop-wont-help-climate-change.html
8/26/2020 8:00 AMThe calcium in our bones and teeth likely came from stars exploding in supernovas and scattering this mineral across the universe in massive quantities, according to a new study. In fact, half of the calcium in the universe likely came from calcium-rich supernovae. But these explosions have turned out to be incredibly rare events that scientists have had difficulty observing and analyzing, so they weren’t sure how the calcium was created. Explosions and mergers of stars are also known to create other heavy elements, like gold and platinum. But the calcium has presented more of a mystery.https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/05/health/calcium-supernova-discovery-trnd-scn/index.html
8/26/2020 10:00 AMA team of astronomers have observed what they believe to be a neutron star being born following a supernova first detected in 1987, in a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way 170,000 light-years from Earth, dubbed SN 1987A. Until now, astronomers weren’t sure if the neutron star survived the powerful event and didn’t just collapse in on itself to form a black hole — but a new paper suggests that it may have survived after all.https://futurism.com/young-neutron-star-33-years-old
8/26/2020 12:00 PMAn experimental mission to test tether-based orbital debris cleanup method with “Terminator Tape” is slated to launch this fall to test the deorbit performance of two satellites. The Millennium Space Systems mission, called DragRacer, involves two small satellites that are set to launch simultaneously to low Earth orbit (LEO) to measure how fast satellites fall out of space. The goal, the company said, is to study technologies for removing space debris from orbit.https://www.space.com/dragracer-space-junk-terminator-tape-satellite-deorbit-test.html
8/26/2020 2:00 PMUniversity of Toronto Engineering researchers have discovered a dose threshold that greatly increases the delivery of cancer-fighting drugs into a tumor. Determining this threshold provides a potentially universal method for gauging nanoparticle dosage and could help advance a new generation of cancer therapy, imaging and diagnostics.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-cancer-fighting-nanoparticles.html
8/26/2020 4:00 PMhttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/08/weird-boomerang-earthquake-detected-under-atlantic-ocean/
8/26/2020 6:00 PMThere’s a paradox within the theory of evolution: The life forms that exist today are here because they were able to change when past environments disappeared. Yet, organisms evolve to fit into specific environmental niches.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-boundaries-bridges-evolution.html
8/27/2020 8:00 AMA new study, published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, supports predictions that the Arctic could be free of sea ice by 2035. High temperatures in the Arctic during the last interglacial—the warm period around 127,000 years ago—have puzzled scientists for decades. Now the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre climate model has enabled an international team of researchers to compare Arctic sea ice conditions during the last interglacial with present day. Their findings are important for improving predictions of future sea ice change.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-evidence-loss-arctic-sea-ice.html
8/27/2020 10:00 AMArctic sea ice is melting more quickly than once assumed. Today’s climate models have yet to incorporate the steep rise in temperatures that have occurred over the past 40 years. This, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Copenhagen and other institutions.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-underestimated-pace-arctic.html
8/27/2020 12:00 PMPlants are factories that manufacture yield from light and carbon dioxide—but parts of this complex process, called photosynthesis, are hindered by a lack of raw materials and machinery. To optimize production, scientists from the University of Essex have resolved two major photosynthetic bottlenecks to boost plant productivity by 27 percent in real-world field conditions, according to a new study published in Nature Plants. This is the third breakthrough for the research project Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE); however, this photosynthetic hack has also been shown to conserve water.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-breakthrough-photosynthetic-hacks-boost-yield.html
8/27/2020 2:00 PMScientists have successfully developed a pocket-sized particle accelerator capable of projecting ultra-short electron beams with laser light at more than 99.99% of the speed of light.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-scientists-compact-particle-electron-nearer.html
8/27/2020 4:00 PMNASA’s Dawn spacecraft gave scientists extraordinary close-up views of the dwarf planet Ceres, which lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. By the time the mission ended in October 2018, the orbiter had dipped to less than 22 miles (35 kilometers) above the surface, revealing crisp details of the mysterious bright regions Ceres had become known for.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-mystery-bright-areas-ceres-salty.html
8/27/2020 6:00 PMPhysicists have long sought to understand the irreversibility of the surrounding world and have credited its emergence to the time-symmetric, fundamental laws of physics. According to quantum mechanics, the final irreversibility of conceptual time reversal requires extremely intricate and implausible scenarios that are unlikely to spontaneously occur in nature. Physicists had previously shown that while time-reversibility is exponentially improbable in a natural environment—it is possible to design an algorithm to artificially reverse a time arrow to a known or given state within an IBM quantum computer. However, this version of the reversed arrow-of-time only embraced a known quantum state and is therefore compared to the quantum version of pressing rewind on a video to “reverse the flow of time.”https://phys.org/news/2020-08-time-reversal-unknown-quantum-state.html
8/28/2020 8:00 AMhttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/08/dwarf-planet-ceres-churns-briny-fluids-icy-volcanoes-nasa-dawn/
8/28/2020 10:00 AMScientists have discovered that the larynx, or voice box, of primates is significantly larger relative to body size, has greater variation, and is under faster rates of evolution than in other mammals.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-primate-voice-evolving-rapid-pace.html
8/28/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-scientists-solved-one-of-the-greatest-open-questions-in-quantum-physics/
8/28/2020 2:00 PMAs we use resources, such as coal, oil, natural gas, copper, silicon and aluminum, to power massive computer farms and process digital information, our technological progress is redistributing Earth’s matter from physical atoms to digital information—the fifth state of matter, alongside liquid, solid, gas and plasma.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-digital-content-track-equal-earth.html
8/28/2020 4:00 PMNorthwestern University researchers have uncovered a new vulnerability in the novel coronavirus’ infamous spike protein—illuminating a relatively simple, potential treatment pathway.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-exposes-vulnerability-sars-cov-.html
8/28/2020 6:00 PMAbout 23,000 Americans and 25,000 Europeans die each year from antibiotic-resistant infections, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The trajectory is alarming: the number of infections is expected to quintuple roughly every eight years. If current trends continue, by 2040 infections will be the world’s leading cause of death. We need a change in the way we think about fighting bacteria that cause infections. Antibiotics have been the weapon of choice for decades, but as bacterial resistance grows, we need new approaches.https://www.scientificamerican.com/custom-media/pictet/how-to-stop-bad-bacteria-sticking-around/
8/29/2020 8:00 AMResearchers have found electrons that behave as if they have no mass, called Dirac electrons, in a compound used in rewritable discs, such as CDs and DVDs. The discovery of ‘massless’ electrons in this phase-change material could lead to faster electronic devices.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-discovery-massless-electrons-phase-change-materials.html
8/29/2020 10:00 AMA new study by Palaeontologists at the University of Southampton suggests four bones recently found on the Isle of Wight belong to new species of theropod dinosaur, the group that includes Tyrannosaurus rex and modern-day birds.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-species-dinosaur-isle-wight.html
8/29/2020 12:00 PMThe first orbital Dream Chaser space plane recently got its wings, and a name. Dream Chaser, which is built by Colorado-based company Sierra Nevada Corp., is the world’s only non-capsule private orbital spacecraft. The winged vehicle will launch vertically atop a rocket but end its missions with runway landings, like NASA’s now-retired space shuttle orbiters used to do.https://www.space.com/dream-chaser-space-plane-tenacity-tour.html
8/29/2020 2:00 PMA species of frog from the Brazilian rainforest has become the first amphibian shown to live in a harem, where one male mates with two females who remain loyal to him.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-male-brazilian-frog-loyal-females.html
8/29/2020 4:00 PMNASA’s exoplanet-hunting TESS space telescope is done with its primary mission, but its search for strange new worlds goes on. TESS (short for “Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite”) wrapped up its two-year primary mission on July 4, having discovered 66 confirmed alien planets and nearly 2,100 “candidates” that scientists still need to vet, NASA officials said. TESS continues to study the heavens, however, on an extended mission that runs through September 2022.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasa-rsquo-s-tess-planet-hunting-space-telescope-completes-its-primary-mission/
8/29/2020 6:00 PMRice University chemist Han Xiao and his team have successfully expanded the genetic code of Escherichia coli bacteria to produce a synthetic building block, a “noncanonical amino acid.” The result is a living indicator for oxidative stress.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-chemists-genetic-code-coli-21st.html
8/30/2020 8:00 AMPaleontologists have discovered the footprint of a giant carnivorous dinosaur nearly matching Tyrannosaurus in size. Bolivia has no known dinosaur body fossils, but it is home to several different dinosaur trackways locations. One location is the spectacular Cal Orck’o site which preserves thousands of footprints on a nearly vertical rock wall just a few kilometers outside of Sucre.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/giant-dinosaur-footprint-discovered-in-bolivia/
8/30/2020 10:00 AMHumans are not the only social animal struggling with new infectious diseases. When Hamilton College Associate Professor of Biology Andrea Townsend began studying the social behavior of American crows, her work was complicated by West Nile virus, an emerging disease with devastating effects on crow populations. Her research pivoted to investigating the effects of disease on crow social behavior. “It made me wonder how social animals should, in general, respond to novel diseases,” Townsend said. “Do other animals ‘socially distance’ during disease outbreaks, like humans during the COVID-19 pandemic?”https://phys.org/news/2020-08-emerging-infectious-disease-social-distancing.html
8/30/2020 12:00 PMThe extinction of prehistoric megafauna like the woolly mammoth, cave lion, and woolly rhinoceros at the end of the last ice age has often been attributed to the spread of early humans across the globe. Although overhunting led to the demise of some species, a study appearing August 13 in the journal Current Biology found that the extinction of the woolly rhinoceros may have had a different cause: climate change. By sequencing ancient DNA from 14 of these megaherbivores, researchers found that the woolly rhinoceros population remained stable and diverse until only a few thousand years before it disappeared from Siberia, when temperatures likely rose too high for the cold-adapted species.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-ancient-genomes-woolly-rhinos-extinct.html
8/30/2020 2:00 PMRecent observations of Betelgeuse have revealed that the star’s unexpected and significant dimming periods in late 2019 and early 2020 were most likely caused by the ejection and cooling of dense hot gases, and that the star may be going through another dimming period more than a year early.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-hubble-betelgeuse-mysterious-dimming-due.html
8/30/2020 4:00 PMOur solar system is a chaotic place – literally. Rewinding orbital possibilities quickly becomes too complex and too numerous for astronomers to calculate. That means we only know the orbital movements of Earth and the other planets over the past 60 million years or so. To look further back, scientists are pulling core samples from deep under Earth’s surface to examine long-ago climate change and learn about how the planets moved hundreds of millions of years ago.https://astronomy.com/news/2019/03/uncovering-earths-orbital-history-in-ancient-rock-deposits
8/30/2020 6:00 PMNearly 40 years of satellite data from Greenland shows that glaciers on the island have shrunk so much that even if global warming were to stop today, the ice sheet would continue shrinking.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-greenland-ice-sheet.html
8/31/2020 8:00 AMA new federal rule that determines how the Clean Water Act is implemented leaves millions of miles of streams and acres of wetlands unprotected based on selective interpretation of case law and a distortion of scientific evidence, researchers say in a new publication.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-scientists-decry-federal-unconnected-streams.html
8/31/2020 10:00 AMThe end of the universe as we know it will not end with a bang. Most stars will slowly fizzle as their temperatures fade to zero.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-physicists-supernova.html
8/31/2020 12:00 PMYale physicists have developed an error-correcting cat—a new device that combines the Schrödinger’s cat concept of superposition (a physical system existing in two states at once) with the ability to fix some of the trickiest errors in a quantum computation.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-quantum-error-correcting-cat.html
8/31/2020 2:00 PMResearchers have designed an off-grid, low-cost modular energy source that can efficiently produce power at night. The system uses commercially available technology and could eventually help meet the need for nighttime lighting in urban areas or provide lighting in developing countries.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-efficient-low-cost-power-night.html
8/31/2020 4:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2643949475896988
8/31/2020 6:00 PMWhen scientists recently X-rayed a fish’s head, they found a gruesome stowaway: A “vampire” crustacean had devoured, then replaced, its host’s tongue. The buglike isopod, also called a tongue biter or tongue-eating louse, keeps sucking its blood meals from a fish’s tongue until the entire structure withers away. Then the true horror begins, as the parasite assumes the organ’s place in the still-living fish’s mouth.https://www.livescience.com/image-fish-tongue-parasite.html
9/1/2020 8:00 AMResearchers are investigating an alien version of water inside the strange, icy interiors of Uranus and Neptune. In a new study, scientists have devised a theoretical computer model and used it to peer inside the ice giants Uranus and Neptune. With this tool, the team studied the thermal and electrical conductivity of the unusual water inside of these planets. In simulating these physical processes on the teeny-tiny atomic scale, the researchers hope that this new model will reveal information about the icy bodies’ internal structure, magnetic fields, how they evolved and exactly how old they are.https://www.space.com/uranus-neptune-interior-model-alien-water.html
9/1/2020 10:00 AMT10
9/1/2020 12:00 PMAalto University researchers have developed a black silicon photodetector that has reached above 130% efficiency. Thus, for the first time, a photovoltaic device has exceeded the 100% limit, which has earlier been considered as the theoretical maximum for external quantum efficiency.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-black-silicon-photodetector-efficiency-limit.html
9/1/2020 2:00 PMResearchers in South Africa’s Border Cave, a well-known archeological site perched on a cliff between eSwatini (Swaziland) and KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, have found evidence that people have been using grass bedding to create comfortable areas for sleeping and working on at least 200,000 years ago.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-years-humans-beds.html
9/1/2020 4:00 PMIf we can harness it, quantum technology promises fantastic new possibilities. But first, scientists need to coax quantum systems to stay yoked for longer than a few millionths of a second.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-scientists-quantum-states-longer.html
9/1/2020 6:00 PMA new design for light-emitting diodes (LEDs) developed by a team including scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) may hold the key to overcoming a long-standing limitation in the light sources’ efficiency. The concept, demonstrated with microscopic LEDs in the lab, achieves a dramatic increase in brightness as well as the ability to create laser light—all characteristics that could make it valuable in a range of large-scale and miniaturized applications.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-bright-tiny-scientists-nanoscale.html
9/2/2020 8:00 AMAs the fiery emissary streaked across the skies of Costa Rica, an unearthly mix of orange and green, Marcia Campos Muñoz was in her pajamas, watching TV on the couch. It was 23 April 2019, a bit past 9 p.m., when she heard a foreboding rumble. Heart racing, she tiptoed outside to calm her barking dog, Perry, and to check on the cow pastures ringing her small house in Aguas Zarcas, a village carved out of Costa Rica’s tropical rainforest. Nothing. She ducked back inside, just before a blast on the back terrace rattled the house to its bones.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/unusual-meteorite-more-valuable-gold-may-hold-building-blocks-life
9/2/2020 10:00 AMT10
9/2/2020 12:00 PMIn the 2014 movie Interstellar, astronauts investigate planets orbiting a supermassive black hole as potential homes for human life. A supermassive black hole warps surrounding space-time, according to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, and at least one of the planets in the movie, called Miller’s planet, experienced time passing at a slowed-down rate. For each hour the astronauts spent on the planet, several years passed outside the black hole’s influence.https://astronomy.com/news/2019/10/could-life-survive-on-a-planet-orbiting-a-black-hole
9/2/2020 2:00 PMIn 2019, a massive telescope will launch from the Earth, providing an in-depth view of space and bringing into focus objects older and farther away than we have ever seen before. The instrument will bear the name of James Webb, a champion of the early space program, who saw further ahead than many other people at the time.https://www.space.com/38870-james-webb-biography.html
9/2/2020 4:00 PMWith its frilled gills, layered needle-point teeth, snake-like appearance, and quick-striking abilities, this shark is one of the most engrossing creatures of the deep sea.https://roaring.earth/the-frilled-shark/
9/2/2020 6:00 PMPeering into the early universe, astronomers uncovered a surprise: a young galaxy that looks a lot like our home, the Milky Way. The newfound galaxy is called SPT0418-47 and, given its great distance from Earth, astronomers see the galaxy as it was when the universe was just 1.4 billion years old — roughly 12 billion years before today.https://www.space.com/milky-way-lookalike-in-early-universe.html
9/3/2020 8:00 AMAstronomers think they might be able to detect black holes falling into wormholes using ripples in spacetime known as gravitational waves, but only if wormholes actually exist and such a scenario ever happened, a new study finds.https://www.space.com/black-holes-fall-into-wormholes-gravitational-waves.html
9/3/2020 10:00 AMT10
9/3/2020 12:00 PMIn April of this year, NASA nudged the Cassini spacecraft into an orbit that took it through a narrow gap between Saturn’s innermost ring (the D-ring) and the gas giant itself. Over the next few months, Cassini skimmed the upper atmosphere of the ringed planet nearly two dozen times. During 11 of those orbits, Cassini’s Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument took unprecedented measurements of Saturn’s ionosphere — a shell of charged particles that surrounds the planet and shields it from incoming solar radiation and cosmic rays.https://astronomy.com/news/2017/12/saturns-ionosphere
9/3/2020 2:00 PMImmediately after the Big Bang, every particle in the universe traveled at the speed of light. And then the Higgs field—an invisible and sticky medium that permeates the entire universe—fell into place. Some particles didn’t even notice the shift. But others felt a sudden jolt as their point-like bodies burgeoned with something completely new: mass.https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/a-new-view-of-the-higgs-boson
9/3/2020 4:00 PMThe remains of several timber circles constructed over 4,500 years ago have been discovered at the Perdigões complex archaeological site in Portugal. Though some news outlets have described the circles as a “woodhenge,” akin to the famous Neolithic monument of Stonehenge, archaeologists prefer not to call it that – instead referring to them a “Timber Circles.” While the archaeologists prefer a different name the design is similar with wooden posts encircling an area.https://www.livescience.com/ancient-timber-circles-discovered-portugal.html
9/3/2020 6:00 PMAlthough true “cyborgs”—part human, part robotic beings—are science fiction, researchers are taking steps toward integrating electronics with the body. Such devices could monitor for tumor development or stand in for damaged tissues. But connecting electronics directly to human tissues in the body is a huge challenge. Now, a team is reporting new coatings for components that could help them more easily fit into this environment.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-cyborg-technology-enable-diagnostics-merger.html
9/4/2020 8:00 AMA temperature of 130 degrees Fahrenheit (54.4 degrees Celsius) recorded in California’s Death Valley on Sunday by the US National Weather Service could be the hottest ever measured with modern instruments, officials say.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-meteorologists-degree-death-valley-temp.html
9/4/2020 10:00 AMT10
9/4/2020 12:00 PMPlastic pollution of land, water and air is a global problem. Even when plastic bags or water bottles break down to the point at which they are no longer an eyesore, tiny fragments can still contaminate the environment. Animals and humans can ingest the particles, with uncertain health consequences. Now, scientists report that they are among the first to examine micro- and nanoplastics in human organs and tissues.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-micro-nanoplastics-human-tissues.html
9/4/2020 2:00 PMFor the first time ever, scientists have witnessed the interaction of a new phase of matter known as “time crystals”. The discovery, published in Nature Materials, may lead to applications in quantum information processing because time crystals automatically remain intact—coherent—in varying conditions. Protecting coherence is the main difficulty hindering the development of powerful quantum computers.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-crystals-interacting.html
9/4/2020 4:00 PMThe debate over the origins and molecular structure of ‘Oumuamua continued today with an announcement in The Astrophysical Journal Letters that despite earlier promising claims, the interstellar object is not made of molecular hydrogen ice after all.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-scientists-oumuamua-isnt-molecular-hydrogen.html
9/4/2020 6:00 PMWhile clothing moths are well known for their unusual diets, one subgroup takes fussy eating to the next level – living solely on a diet of animal horns, nails, and shells.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/meet-the-moth-with-a-taste-for-tortoise/
9/5/2020 8:00 AMIs there life on a distant planet? One way astronomers are trying to find out is by analyzing the light that is scattered off a planet’s atmosphere. Some of that light, which originates from the stars it orbits, has interacted with its atmosphere, and provides important clues to the gases it contains. If gases like oxygen, methane or ozone are detected, that could indicate the presence of living organisms. Such gases are known as biosignatures. A team of scientists from EPFL and Tor Vergata University of Rome has developed a statistical model that can help astronomers interpret the results of the search for these “signs of life.”https://phys.org/news/2020-08-tool-future-life-exoplanets.html
9/5/2020 10:00 AMT10
9/5/2020 12:00 PMA small but evolving dent in Earth’s magnetic field can cause big headaches for satellites. Earth’s magnetic field acts like a protective shield around the planet, repelling and trapping charged particles from the Sun. But over South America and the southern Atlantic Ocean, an unusually weak spot in the field—called the South Atlantic Anomaly, or SAA—allows these particles to dip closer to the surface than normal. Particle radiation in this region can knock out onboard computers and interfere with the data collection of satellites that pass through it—a key reason why NASA scientists want to track and study the anomaly.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-nasa-track-slowly-dent-earth.html
9/5/2020 2:00 PMImagine reading by the light of an exploded star, brighter than a full moon—it might be fun to think about, but this scene is the prelude to a disaster when the radiation devastates life as we know it. Killer cosmic rays from nearby supernovae could be the culprit behind at least one mass extinction event, researchers said, and finding certain radioactive isotopes in Earth’s rock record could confirm this scenario.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-stars-mass-extinction-earth.html
9/5/2020 4:00 PMA car-size asteroid flew within about 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers) of Earth on Sunday, August 16. That’s a remarkably close shave — the closest ever recorded, in fact, according to asteroid trackers and a catalog compiled by Sormano Astronomical Observatory in Italy.https://www.businessinsider.com/car-size-asteroid-2020qg-missed-earth-by-2000-miles-2020-8
9/5/2020 6:00 PMPulsars are the lighthouses of the universe. These tiny, compact objects are neutron stars — the remnants of once-massive stars — that spin rapidly, beaming radiation into space. Now, for the first time, astronomers have mapped the surface of a 16-mile-wide pulsar in exquisite detail. The result challenges astronomers’ textbook picture of a pulsar’s appearance and opens the door to learning more about these extreme objects.https://astronomy.com/news/2019/12/astronomers-map-a-neutron-stars-surface-for-the-first-time
9/6/2020 8:00 AMA group of theoretical physicists, including two physicists from the University of Groningen, have proposed a ‘table-top’ device that could measure gravity waves. However, their actual aim is to answer one of the biggest questions in physics: is gravity a quantum phenomenon? The key element for the device is the quantum superposition of large objects.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-stone-quantum-gravity.html
9/6/2020 10:00 AMT10
9/6/2020 12:00 PMMore than 50% of the world’s oceans could already be affected by climate change, with this figure rising as high as 80% over the coming decades, a new study has shown.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-world-oceans-affected-climate.html
9/6/2020 2:00 PMIf you’ve ever been woken up before sunrise by the trilling and chirping of birds outside your window, you may have wondered: why do birds sing so loud, so early in the morning? Researchers at Duke University say there may be a good reason why birds are most vocal at first light. By singing early and often, a new study suggests, birds perform better during the day.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-songbirds-people.html
9/6/2020 4:00 PMBees and flowers seem inseparable harbingers of spring, but what happens when pollinators emerge later than their sources of nectar and pollen? Reporting on the first community-wide assessment of 67 bee species of the Colorado Rockies, ecologists Michael Stemkovski of Utah State University and Rebecca Irwin of North Carolina State University say “phenological mismatch,” changing timing of life cycles between bees and flowers, caused by climate change, has the potential to disrupt a mutually beneficial relationship.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-sync-ecologists-climate-affecting-bee.html
9/6/2020 6:00 PMResearch published in Earth System Dynamics reports that the most sensitive climate models overestimate global warming during the last 50 years. Three scientists from the University of Exeter studied the output of complex climate models and compared them to temperature observations since the 1970s. This new study is only one piece of the puzzle.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-global-trends-inconsistent-high-climate.html
9/7/2020 8:00 AMCitizen scientists have spotted almost 100 of our sun’s nearest neighbors. In a new study, members of the public — including both professional scientists and volunteers — discovered 95 brown dwarfs (celestial objects too big to be considered planets and too small to be considered stars) near our sun through the NASA-funded citizen science project Backyard Worlds: Planet 9. They made this discovery with the help of astronomers using the National Science Foundations National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory.https://www.space.com/citizen-scientists-discover-95-brown-dwarfs.html
9/7/2020 10:00 AMT10
9/7/2020 12:00 PMIn a study published in the Journal of Morphology, a team of researchers from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), Florida Museum of Natural History, Louisiana State University and Thailand’s Maejo University have successfully pieced together the ancestral relationships that make up the family tree of hillstream loaches (Balitoridae), detailing for the first time a range of unusual pelvic adaptations across the family that have given some of its members an ability to crawl, or even walk as salamanders do, to navigate terrestrial surfaces.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-asia-hillstream-loaches-reveals-keys.html
9/7/2020 2:00 PMNot so long ago, astronomers mapped a galaxy far, far away using radio waves and found it has a strikingly familiar shape. In the process, they discovered the object, called TXS 0128+554, experienced two powerful bouts of activity in the last century. “The first time I saw the results, I immediately thought it looked like Darth Vader’s TIE fighter,” said Matthew Lister, a professor of physics and astronomy at Purdue University.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/nasa-missions-explore-a-tie-fighter-active-galaxy
9/7/2020 4:00 PMA cosmic gas cloud has a mysterious gamma-ray “heartbeat” that appears to be in sync with a neighboring black hole. Using data from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, an international team of researchers found the “heartbeat” in a cosmic gas cloud in the constellation Aquila, the eagle. The cloud “beats” in rhythm with a miniature black hole located roughly 100 light-years away, suggesting the objects are connected in some way, according to a statement from the DESY national research center in Germany.https://www.space.com/mysterious-gamma-ray-heartbeat-gas-cloud.html
9/7/2020 6:00 PMA laboratory demonstration of the classic “Wigner’s friend” thought experiment could overturn cherished assumptions about reality.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/this-twist-on-schroedingers-cat-paradox-has-major-implications-for-quantum-theory/
9/8/2020 8:00 AMAn international team of researchers have discovered a dense, cold gas that’s been shot out from the center of the Milky Way “like bullets”. Exactly how the gas has been ejected is still a mystery, but the research team, including Professor Naomi McClure-Griffiths from The Australian National University (ANU), say their findings could have important implications for the future of our galaxy.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-mystery-gas-center-milky.html
9/8/2020 10:00 AMT10
9/8/2020 12:00 PMFor as long as humans have gazed skyward, a question has loomed in the back of our collective mind: How do we know everything that we see is everything there is?https://astronomy.com/magazine/greatest-mysteries/2019/07/37-do-we-live-in-a-multiple-universe
9/8/2020 2:00 PMA new study found that if EVs replaced 25% of combustion-engine cars currently on the road, the United States would save approximately $17 billion annually by avoiding damages from climate change and air pollution. In more aggressive scenarios—replacing 75% of cars with EVs and increasing renewable energy generation—savings could reach as much as $70 billion annually.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-widespread-electric-vehicle-billions-dollars.html
9/8/2020 4:00 PMJapan’s asteroid-sampling mission is officially clear to return its precious cargo to Australia in December, according to statements from both countries’ governments. The Hayabusa2 spacecraft is trekking back to Earth with a sample capsule full of material snagged from a near-Earth asteroid called Ryugu. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which runs the mission, has long planned to deposit that capsule in the vast desert of Australia, but the new announcement marks that country’s official approval of the plan.https://www.space.com/hayabusa2-asteroid-capsule-return-australia-approved.html
9/8/2020 6:00 PMThe record-breaking asteroid 2020 QG won’t soon forget its run-in with Earth. On August 16, the car-sized 2020 QG zoomed just 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers) above the Indian Ocean, making the closest known flyby by an asteroid that didn’t end up slamming into our planet. Though 2020 QG survived the encounter, its path through space was altered significantly.https://www.space.com/asteroid-ciose-earth-flyby-orbit-change-2020-qg.html
9/9/2020 8:00 AMGreenland lost a record amount of ice during an extra warm 2019, with the melt massive enough to cover California in more than four feet (1.25 meters) of water, a new study said.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-greenland-lost-billion-tons-ice.html
9/9/2020 10:00 AMT10
9/9/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=308111510304485
9/9/2020 2:00 PMThis visualization is generated from a supercomputer simulation of the X-57 “Maxwell” electric experimental aircraft. Just as electric cars are becoming more and more commonplace on our roads each day, aerospace engineers are seeking to make electric air transportation a reality.https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/nasa-is-developing-an-all-electric-x-57-x-plane-a-cleaner-way-to-fly
9/9/2020 4:00 PMA team of researchers at DESY has reached an important milestone on the road to the particle accelerator of the future. For the first time, a so-called laser plasma accelerator has run for more than a day while continuously producing electron beams. The LUX beamline, jointly developed and operated by DESY and the University of Hamburg, achieved a run time of 30 hours.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-world-plasma-clock.html
9/9/2020 6:00 PMTime crystals are fascinating systems with one of the coolest names in all of physics. They were developed only a few years ago and since then researchers have worked to understand exactly how they behave. Now, an international team has observed two time crystals interacting for the first time.https://www.iflscience.com/space/researchers-observed-the-first-interaction-between-time-crystals/
9/10/2020 8:00 AMAbrupt climate changes during the Last Glacial Period, some 115,000 to 11,700 years ago, happened at the same time across a region extending from the Arctic to the Southern Hemisphere subtropics, new research has revealed.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-rapid-arctic-widespread-climate.html
9/10/2020 10:00 AMT10
9/10/2020 12:00 PMSea pigs, also known as Scotoplanes, are a group of deep-sea echinoderms with enlarged tube “feet” that looks like little legs. They use water cavities in their skin to inflate and deflate the appendages, allowing them to “walk” with these feet.https://roaring.earth/the-sea-pig/
9/10/2020 2:00 PMDuring a 2012 expedition to Antarctica, a team of Japanese and Belgian researchers picked up a small rock that appeared coal black against the snow white. Now known as meteorite Asuka 12236, it was roughly the size of a golf ball. Despite its modest size, this rock from space was a colossal find. As it turns out, Asuka 12236 is one of the best-preserved meteorites of its kind ever discovered.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/pristine-space-rock-offers-nasa-scientists-peek-at-evolution-of-life-s-building-blocks
9/10/2020 4:00 PMA novel machine learning model developed by researchers at Michigan State University suggests that mutations to the SARS-CoV-2 genome have made the virus more infectious.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-machine-learning-sars-cov-infectious.html
9/10/2020 6:00 PMCornell researchers used an ultrathin graphene “sandwich” to create a tiny magnetic field sensor that can operate over a greater temperature range than previous sensors, while also detecting miniscule changes in magnetic fields that might otherwise get lost within a larger magnetic background.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-graphene-sensors-subtleties-magnetic-fields.html
9/11/2020 8:00 AMA new measurement technology developed at the University of Bern provides unique insights into the climate of the past. Previous CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere could be reconstructed more accurately than ever before, thanks to high-resolution measurements made on an Antarctic ice core. The study, which analyzed the Earth’s atmospheric composition between 330,000 and 450,000 years ago, was made possible by the commitment of experts, and their decades of experience, at the University of Bern.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-earth-anthropogenic-carbon-dioxide-unprecedented.html
9/11/2020 10:00 AMAstronomers have used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to record material blasting away from the site of an exploded star at speeds faster than 20 million miles per hour. This is about 25,000 times faster than the speed of sound on Earth.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-kepler-supernova-remnant-debris-stellar.html
9/11/2020 12:00 PMAstronomers recently imaged two budding stars locked in a gravitational waltz that twisted their planet-forming disks into a pretzel-shaped knot.https://astronomy.com/news/2019/10/baby-stars-found-twisting-planet-forming-disks-into-a-pretzel
9/11/2020 2:00 PMScientists say a fossil unearthed in China shows a savage encounter – frozen in time. They revealed that what appears to be a large lizard-like animal inside of something just as big – that looks like a dolphin — is a dramatic record of one animal trying to swallow the other In a struggle that left both dead.https://news.yahoo.com/fossil-reveals-doubly-fatal-triassic-084436077.html
9/11/2020 4:00 PMA father and son team of fossil hunters have discovered a tooth from a sauropod dinosaur near the town of Katsuura on the Japanese island of Shikoku. The fossil, measuring 2.3 cm in length was discovered in Lower Cretaceous rocks dating to approximately 130 million years ago.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/father-and-son-team-discover-a-dinosaur-tooth-in-japan/
9/11/2020 6:00 PMPhysical evidence found in caves in Laos helps tell a story about a connection between the end of the Green Sahara – when once heavily vegetated Northern Africa became a hyper-arid landscape – and a previously unknown megadrought that crippled Southeast Asia 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-08/uoc–rle082020.php
9/12/2020 8:00 AMA small diamond miner that has dug some of the world’s most valuable gems from a mountainous African kingdom has found another huge stone. Gem Diamonds Ltd. said Friday it had an unearthed a 442-carat diamond at its Letseng mine in Lesotho.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-22/african-diamond-miner-s-huge-find-offers-chance-to-buck-downturn
9/12/2020 10:00 AMRussian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner has captured some truly amazing views of Earth from above as seen from the International Space Station, but his latest video of auroras included an unexpected surprise: five bright lights on the horizon that he dubbed ‘space guests.’ They’re likely satellites, not aliens, but still amazing to see for sure.https://www.space.com/russian-cosmonaut-space-guests-video-from-station.html
9/12/2020 12:00 PMWhat has a mouth that falls off, lives on an animal’s facial hair, and is pregnant before it’s even born? While it sounds like the the beginning of a terrible joke, such a creature does exist, and they’re just as strange as you’d expect them to be.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/the-hitchhiker-s-guide-to-the-lobster-s-face/
9/12/2020 2:00 PMThe NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the closest images yet of the sky’s latest visitor to make the headlines, comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE, after it passed by the Sun. The new images of the comet were taken on 8 August and feature the visitor’s coma, the fine shell that surrounds its nucleus, and its dusty output.https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic2015/
9/12/2020 4:00 PMFor schools of fish, herds of antelope, and even human societies, inherent safety is one of many advantages of cooperative groups. Surrounded by their peers, individuals can lower their vigilance and calmly engage in other activities, such as foraging or watching YouTube videos.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-scientists-social-cue-safety.html
9/12/2020 6:00 PMThe gharial, also known as the gavial, is an extremely rare fish-eating crocodile—only about 200 individuals remain in the wild. This unique crocodilian is native to the northern part of the Indian subcontinent. While they once thrived in all major river systems, this species is now limited to only 2% of their historical range.https://roaring.earth/nearly-extinct-croc/
9/13/2020 8:00 AMBlack holes are at the center of almost all galaxies that have been studied so far. They have an unimaginably large mass and therefore attract matter, gas and even light. But they can also emit matter in the form of plasma jets—a kind of plasma beam that is ejected from the center of the galaxy with tremendous energy. A plasma jet can extend several hundred thousand light years far into space.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-black-hole-powers-jet-magnetic.html
9/13/2020 10:00 AMIn a first-ever study using ozone data collected by commercial aircraft, researchers from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder found that levels of the pollutant in the lowest part of Earth’s atmosphere have increased across the Northern Hemisphere over the past 20 years. That’s even as tighter controls on emissions of ozone precursors have lowered ground-level ozone in some places, including North America and Europe.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-ozone-northern-hemisphere-years.html
9/13/2020 12:00 PM“Is it a wave or is it a particle?” Never has such a simple question had such a complicated answer as in the quantum realm. The answer, perhaps frighteningly, depends on how you ask the question. Pass a beam of light through two slits, and it acts like a wave. Fire that same beam of light into a conducting plate of metal, and it acts like a particle. Under appropriate conditions, we can measure either wave-like or particle-like behavior for photons — the fundamental quantum of light — confirming the dual, and very weird, nature of reality.https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/08/19/in-quantum-physics-even-humans-act-as-waves/
9/13/2020 2:00 PMGalactic halos are both more massive and more complicated than scientists realized, according to new observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. The venerable telescope turned its sights on the neighboring Andromeda galaxy using dozens of different quasars to map the galactic halo. Andromeda, more formally known as M31, is a spiral-shaped galaxy about the same size of the Milky Way galaxy we live in, with about 1 trillion stars. Cosmically, it’s right next door, just 2.5 million light-years away, which means that Hubble can study its halo in unprecedented detail.https://www.space.com/andromeda-galaxy-halo-hubble-telescope-discovery.html
9/13/2020 4:00 PMThe last time we saw NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission was on July 30, 2020, as it disappeared into the black of deep space on a trajectory for Mars. But with NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System, you can follow in real time as humanity’s most sophisticated rover—and the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter traveling with it—treks millions of miles over the next six months to Jezero Crater.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-nasa-perseverance-rover-real-mars.html
9/13/2020 6:00 PMThe LHCb experiment at CERN has developed a penchant for finding exotic combinations of quarks, the elementary particles that come together to give us composite particles such as the more familiar proton and neutron. In particular, LHCb has observed several tetraquarks, which, as the name suggests, are made of four quarks (or rather two quarks and two antiquarks). Observing these unusual particles helps scientists advance our knowledge of the strong force, one of the four known fundamental forces in the universe. At a CERN seminar held virtually on 12 August, LHCb announced the first signs of an entirely new kind of tetraquark with a mass of 2.9 GeV/c²: the first such particle with only one charm quark.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-open-charm-tetraquark.html
9/14/2020 8:00 AMFor all of its technological prowess, NASA can still have a hard time sending data from distant space missions back down to Earth and vice versa. It’s part of the reason that images and footage from space are often so grainy. But with new laser facilities coming online next year, NASA plans to beam messages up and down from Earth using infrared lasers, vastly improving the space agency’s bandwidth, according to a NASA press release.https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-facility-beam-messages-space-lasers
9/14/2020 10:00 AMScientists studying leaves from a 23-million-year-old forest have for the first time linked high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide with increased plant growth, and the hot climate off the time. The finding adds to the understanding of how rising CO2 heats the earth, and how the dynamics of plant life could shift within decades, when CO2 levels may closely mirror those of the distant past.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-fossil-high-atmospheric-carbon-spurred.html
9/14/2020 12:00 PMNew simulations show that NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be able to reveal myriad rogue planets – freely floating bodies that drift through our galaxy untethered to a star. Studying these island worlds will help us understand more about how planetary systems form, evolve, and break apart.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/unveiling-rogue-planets-with-nasas-roman-space-telescope
9/14/2020 2:00 PMFor several years, astronomers and cosmologists have theorized about the existence of an additional planet with a mass 10 times greater than that of Earth, situated in the outermost regions of the solar system. This hypothetical planet, dubbed Planet 9, could be the source of gravitational effects that would explain the unusual patterns in the orbits of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) highlighted by existing cosmological data. TNOs are celestial bodies that orbit the sun and are located beyond Neptune.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-planet-primordial-black-hole.html
9/14/2020 4:00 PMWith the help of two extremely bright quasars located more than 7 billion light-years away, researchers recently bolstered the case for quantum entanglement — a phenomenon Einstein described as “spooky action at a distance” — by eliminating one classical alternative: The freedom-of-choice loophole.https://astronomy.com/news/2018/08/distant-quasars-confirm-quantum-entanglement
9/14/2020 6:00 PMPlaces with lots of nooks and crannies contain lots of living things—that old brick-pile in the backyard has far more critters than the concrete driveway. This general rule is the same in natural habitats, from the abyssal trenches to the tops of mountains, from coral reefs to the tundra. These habitats range from relatively simple, flat surfaces to highly complex three-dimensional structures.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-nooks-crannies-critters-complexity-habitats.html
9/15/2020 8:00 AMOne of the worst extinction events in Earth’s history may have been triggered by a supernova, the violent death of a distant star. About 75% of all species on Earth died out at the end of the Devonian Period, nearly 360 million years ago. Rocks from this era preserve many thousands of spores that appear to be scorched by ultraviolet (UV) radiation, indicating that something went seriously wrong with our protective ozone layer.https://www.space.com/supernova-caused-earth-mass-extinction-devonian.html
9/15/2020 10:00 AMBiofuel and bioenergy systems are integral to scenarios for displacing fossil fuel use and producing negative emissions through carbon capture and storage. But the net greenhouse gas mitigation benefit of these systems has been controversial, due to concerns around carbon losses from changes in land use and foregone sequestration benefits from alternative land uses.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-advanced-biofuels-real-fossil-fuels.html
9/15/2020 12:00 PMA lens that is a thousand times thinner than a human hair has been developed in Brazil by researchers at the University of São Paulo’s São Carlos School of Engineering (EESC-USP). It can serve as a camera lens in smartphones or be used in other devices that depend on sensors.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-flat-lens-thousand-thinner-human.html
9/15/2020 2:00 PMA re-analysis of fossils from one of Europe’s most significant paleontological sites reveals a wide diversity of animal species, including a large terrestrial monkey, short-necked giraffe, rhinos and saber-toothed cats.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-fossils-reveal-diversity-animal-species.html
9/15/2020 4:00 PMAn international team of researchers has found that dam building in the 20th century offset some of the factors that would have led to a higher rise in sea levels. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes their study of the factors that have led to a rise in global sea levels and what they learned.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-20th-century-offset-sea.html
9/15/2020 6:00 PMhttps://phys.org/news/2020-08-scarcity.html
9/16/2020 8:00 AMA giant crater has been discovered on Siberia’s Arctic tundra, with scientists saying the 165 foot deep hole was formed through an explosion that hurled soil and ice hundreds of feet from the epicenter.https://www.newsweek.com/siberia-crater-methane-explosion-arctic-1528881
9/16/2020 10:00 AMOnce in a while, over the history of life, a new trait evolves that leads to an explosion of diversity in a group of organisms. Take wings, for instance. Every group of animals that evolved them has spun off into a host of different species—birds, bats, insects and pterosaurs. Scientists call these “key innovations.”https://phys.org/news/2020-08-biologists-gene-critical-columbines-iconic.html
9/16/2020 12:00 PMEvery hour, the sun saturates the earth with more energy than humans use in a year. Harnessing some of this energy to meet global demand has become a grand challenge, with the world poised to double its energy consumption in just thirty years.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-insights-sun-gathering-technologies.html
9/16/2020 2:00 PMA nearby star, the host of two (and possibly three) planets, was initially thought to be quiet and boring. These attributes are sought-after as they create a safe environment for their planets, especially those that may be in what scientists call “the habitable zone” where liquid water could exist on their surfaces and life might be possible. But astronomers at Arizona State University have announced that this nearby star turns out to be not so tame after all.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-planets-safe-stellar-flares-thought.html
9/16/2020 4:00 PMWhite dwarfs are some of the strangest objects in the universe. The leftover cores from sunlike stars, white dwarfs live for trillions of years through the support of exotic quantum physics. Astronomers recently spotted perhaps the strangest one yet: a dead star the spins twice a second, sucking down material from a nearby companion as it goes.https://www.space.com/fastest-spinning-white-dwarf-vampire.html
9/16/2020 6:00 PMA University of Arizona-led team has nailed down the temperature of the last ice age—the Last Glacial Maximum of 20,000 years ago—to about 46 degrees Fahrenheit (7.8 C).https://phys.org/news/2020-08-cold-ice-age.html
9/17/2020 8:00 AMTuring machines were first proposed by British mathematician Alan Turing in 1936, and are a theoretical mathematical model of what it means for a system to “be a computer.”https://phys.org/news/2020-08-thermodynamics-quest-turing-machine.html
9/17/2020 10:00 AMWhile the brightest stars can be easy to identify, their cooler cousins can be challenging to distinguish from the wannabes that never managed to reach stellar status. The difference can be huge when planets are involved, as with the three worlds orbiting the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1.https://astronomy.com/news/2016/08/when-does-a-small-star-become-a-brown-dwarf
9/17/2020 12:00 PMHibernation is a familiar feature on Earth today. Many animals—especially those that live close to or within polar regions—hibernate to get through the tough winter months when food is scarce, temperatures drop and days are dark.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-fossil-evidence-hibernation-like-state-million-year-old.html
9/17/2020 2:00 PMhttps://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/idnwd8/how_fast_are_you_spinning_around_the_earth/
9/17/2020 4:00 PM359 million years ago the Earth suffered one of its worst extinction events, and a team of researchers at the University of Illinois think that it might be caused by a series of supernova explosions no more than 35 light years away.https://www.universetoday.com/147582/did-a-supernova-cause-the-devonian-mass-extinction-event/
9/17/2020 6:00 PMThe inside of future nuclear fusion energy reactors will be among the harshest environments ever produced on Earth. What’s strong enough to protect the inside of a fusion reactor from plasma-produced heat fluxes akin to space shuttles reentering Earth’s atmosphere?https://phys.org/news/2020-08-tungsten-isotope-armor-future-fusion.html
9/18/2020 8:00 AMAn international team of researchers has discovered a new group of Chlamydiae—Anoxychlamydiales—living under the ocean floor without oxygen. These Chlamydiae have genes that allow them to survive without oxygen while making hydrogen gas. The researchers found that our single-cell ancestors ‘caught’ these hydrogen-producing genes from ancient Chlamydiae up to two-billion years ago—an event that was critical for the evolution of all complex life alive today.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-genes-chlamydiae-complex-life-oxygen.html
9/18/2020 10:00 AMA cellphone power source that lasts nine years. An auto-battery pack that lasts nearly a century. A pacemaker that is powered to last 28,000 years. These surreal claims are being made by a California-based battery company that says successful early test results recently competed on a nano-diamond battery brings them closer to realizing such claims.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-08-energy-firm-nuclear-waste-fueled-diamond.html
9/18/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/100004464135348/videos/1673039052854883/
9/18/2020 2:00 PMYou may have heard this rhyme from a beloved “doctor”: “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish … some have two feet and some have four.” But Dr. Seuss was no biologist (nor a doctor, for that matter). Otherwise, his fish story might have turned out even stranger. Instead of two feet, some fish have two sexes. Some change from male to female, and vice versa. And it’s really not that unusual — as many as 500 fish species can change sex in adulthood, along with plenty other animals and plants.https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/how-stress-climate-and-trauma-can-trigger-sex-changes-in-nature
9/18/2020 4:00 PMBlack holes are some of the strangest and most fascinating objects in outer space. They’re extremely dense, with such strong gravitational attraction that even light cannot escape their grasp if it comes near enough. Albert Einstein first predicted the existence of black holes in 1916, with his general theory of relativity. The term “black hole” was coined many years later in 1967 by American astronomer John Wheeler. After decades of black holes being known only as theoretical objects, the first physical black hole ever discovered was spotted in 1971.https://www.space.com/15421-black-holes-facts-formation-discovery-sdcmp.html
9/18/2020 6:00 PMIt’s a perennial sci-fi favorite: other worlds, other universes, other possibilities, right beyond the bounds of the known cosmos or just a flick of a magic device away. Maybe the other worlds are eerily similar to own except for some quirky little change in history. Maybe they’re radically different, with new and weird and wonderful kinds of life. Maybe they’re so different that the basic rules of physics don’t even apply there.https://www.space.com/inflating-universe-could-create-multiverse.html
9/19/2020 8:00 AMThe outermost reaches of our solar system are a strange place—filled with dark and icy bodies with nicknames like Sedna, Biden and The Goblin, each of which span several hundred miles across. Two new studies by researchers at CU Boulder may help to solve one of the biggest mysteries about these far away worlds: why so many of them don’t circle the sun the way they should.https://www.colorado.edu/today/2020/07/07/outer-solar-system
9/19/2020 10:00 AMSupermassive black holes are the monstrous objects found in the centers of galaxies. The Milky Way’s own supermassive black hole weighs nearly 4 million times more than our Sun. Although massive and often active, these objects are still difficult to “see” in the traditional sense of the word for many reasons. But now, using the uniquely sharp “vision” afforded by the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), astronomers have spotted for the first time a pair of supermassive black holes orbiting each other in a galaxy 750 million light-years away.https://astronomy.com/news/2017/06/orbiting-smbhs
9/19/2020 12:00 PMIf you could peer through the 160 miles of noxious clouds driven by hurricane-force winds over Venus, you’d witness a barren landscape strewn with volcanoes, mountains and high plateaus. Scientists have long suspected that these features formed hundreds of millions of years ago. And today, the thinking went, Venus is geologically dead. But now a cascade of new research in is forcing astronomers to reconsider that idea.https://astronomy.com/news/2019/05/venus-reimagined-a-new-image-of-an-active-world
9/19/2020 2:00 PMOur solar system’s comets are believed to have delivered a wealth of material to early Earth. Among the icy visitors’ suspected gifts were rare gases, small amounts of water, and organic material — all of which could have helped terrestrial life form and evolve. But while ancient Earth received only a moderate influx of comets, any planets around young nearby star Eta Corvi are likely raking in cometary currency.https://astronomy.com/magazine/news/2020/07/is-eta-corvi-a-window-into-our-past
9/19/2020 4:00 PM“There’s always a bigger fish.” Or in the case of the Triassic Period, there’s always a bigger aquatic reptile, as this incredible fossil demonstrates. New research published in iScience offers the oldest direct evidence of “megapredation” in the fossil record, in which an apex predator feeds upon formidably sized prey.https://gizmodo.com/incredible-fossil-shows-a-sea-monster-in-the-belly-of-a-1844776009
9/19/2020 6:00 PMhttps://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2020/05/how-would-a-helicopter-lift-off-the-surface-of-mars
9/20/2020 8:00 AMWe truly are made of star stuff, as famed astronomer Carl Sagan once said. The calcium in our bones and teeth likely came from stars exploding in supernovas and scattering this mineral across the universe in massive quantities, according to a new study.https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/05/health/calcium-supernova-discovery-trnd-scn/index.html
9/20/2020 10:00 AMLocated 500 million light-years away in the Cassiopeia constellation, Galaxy TXS 0128+554 bears a striking resemblance to the iconic TIE Fighter from Star Wars. According to a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, the galaxy is active, meaning all of its stars are not capable of providing the amount of light emitted by the galaxy on their own.https://www.news9.com/story/5f47b8d388bebf6bdb4990c9/nasa-finds-active-galaxy-far-far-away-that-looks-like-a-star-wars-tie-fighter
9/20/2020 12:00 PMThe computer you’re reading this article on right now runs on a binary — strings of zeros and ones. Without zero, modern electronics wouldn’t exist. Without zero, there’s no calculus, which means no modern engineering or automation. Without zero, much of our modern world literally falls apart. Humanity’s discovery of zero was “a total game changer … equivalent to us learning language,” says Andreas Nieder, a cognitive scientist at the University of Tübingen in Germany. But for the vast majority of our history, humans didn’t understand the number zero. It’s not innate in us. We had to invent it. And we have to keep teaching it to the next generation.https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/7/5/17500782/zero-number-math-explained
9/20/2020 2:00 PMIf the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines aren’t enough to convince you that face shields alone shouldn’t be used to stop the spread of COVID-19, then maybe this visualization study will.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-shields-masks-valves-ineffective-covid-.html
9/20/2020 4:00 PMAstronomers have known for two decades that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, but the physics of this expansion remains a mystery. Now, a team of researchers at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa have made a novel prediction—the dark energy responsible for this accelerating growth comes from a vast sea of compact objects spread throughout the voids between galaxies.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-candidate-mysterious-dark-energy.html
9/20/2020 6:00 PMOzone pollution has increased across the Northern Hemisphere over the past 20 years, researchers have found in a new study — the first study to use ozone data collected by commercial aircraft.https://www.space.com/ozone-pollution-increase-in-northern-hemisphere.html
9/21/2020 8:00 AMWith the addition of just a small number of autonomous vehicles (AVs) on the road, traffic flow can become faster, greener, and safer in the near future, a new study suggests.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-small-self-organizing-autonomous-vehicles-significantly.html
9/21/2020 10:00 AMIn a new study, researchers used conservation biology and genomics to discover that the New Guinea singing dog, thought to be extinct for 50 years, still thrives. Scientists found that the ancestral dog population still stealthily wanders in the Highlands of New Guinea. This finding opens new doors for protecting a remarkable creature that can teach biologists about human vocal learning. The New Guinea singing dog can also be utilized as a valuable and unique animal model for studying how human vocal disorders arise and finding potential treatment opportunities. The study was performed by researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health, Cenderawasih University in Indonesia, and other academic centers.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-discovery-ancient-dog-species-human.html
9/21/2020 12:00 PMThe sun’s wispy upper atmosphere, called the corona, is an ever-changing jungle of sizzling plasma. But mapping the strength of the magnetic fields that largely control that behavior has proved elusive. The fields are weak and the brightness of the sun outshines its corona.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sun-first-map-solar-corona-magnetic-field
9/21/2020 2:00 PMGalaxies are the largest things in the universe. Happily for us, they come in only a few varieties, making them easier to identify and theorize about. Nearly all are either elliptical (ball-shaped), irregular, or else spirals of various kinds. But a handful of oddballs fit none of these categories, and one galaxy stands all by itself.https://astronomy.com/magazine/weirdest-objects/2015/11/7-hoags-object
9/21/2020 4:00 PMA new sound has joined the symphony of the universe as we hear it.https://www.space.com/black-hole-intermediate-size-ligo-gravitational-waves-discovery.html
9/21/2020 6:00 PMFor all its vast emptiness, the universe is humming with activity in the form of gravitational waves. Produced by extreme astrophysical phenomena, these reverberations ripple forth and shake the fabric of space-time, like the clang of a cosmic bell.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-ligo-virgo-detectors-massive-gravitational-wave.html
9/22/2020 8:00 AMScientists observed what appears to be a bulked-up black hole tangling with a more ordinary one. The research team, which includes physicists from the University of Maryland, detected two black holes merging, but one of the black holes was 1 1/2 times more massive than any ever observed in a black hole collision. The researchers believe the heavier black hole in the pair may be the result of a previous merger between two black holes.This type of hierarchical combining of black holes has been hypothesized in the past but the observed event, labeled GW190521, would be the first evidence for such activity.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-heaviest-black-hole-merger-gravitational.html
9/22/2020 10:00 AMHas the universe been around forever? If so, perhaps it’s been bouncing back and forth in a never-ending cycle of big bangs in which all matter bubbles out of a singularity, followed by big crunches, in which everything gets swallowed up again to form that dense point from which the universe is born again. And the cycle continues over and over and over.https://www.space.com/cyclical-universe-explained-string-theory.html
9/22/2020 12:00 PMResearchers from McGill University have revealed the steps by which two very distinct organisms—bacteria and carpenter ants—have come to depend on one another for survival to become a single complex life form. The study shows that the two species have collaborated to radically alter the development of the ant embryo to allow this integration to happen. Understanding how such grand unifications originate and evolve is a major puzzle for biologists. Ehab Abouheif, a biologist and senior author on the paper believes that these insights may lead to a better understanding of the origin of complex organisms.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-complex-life-revealed.html
9/22/2020 2:00 PMThe universe turns out to be much bigger and weirder than anyone thought.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-astronomers-revolutionized-our-view-of-the-cosmos/
9/22/2020 4:00 PMA Rochester Institute of Technology researcher developed a mathematical method that shows climate change likely caused the rise and fall of an ancient civilization. Nishant Malik, assistant professor in RIT’s School of Mathematical Sciences, outlined the new technique he developed and showed how shifting monsoon patterns led to the demise of the Indus Valley Civilization, a Bronze Age civilization contemporary to Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-mathematical-method-climate-fall-ancient.html
9/22/2020 6:00 PM80-year-old lung cancer survivor and California State University, Fullerton physics professor emeritus Jim Woodward has an out-of-this-world idea to allow spacecraft to travel to neighboring star systems: tiny crystals that vibrate tens of thousands of times per second when an electric current is applied.https://futurism.com/nasa-funded-scientist-new-thruster-light-speed
9/23/2020 8:00 AMA team of astronomers have identified the first direct evidence that groups of stars can tear apart their planet-forming disc, leaving it warped and with tilted rings. This new research suggests exotic planets, not unlike Tatooine in Star Wars, may form in inclined rings in bent discs around multiple stars. The results were made possible thanks to observations with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).https://phys.org/news/2020-09-planet-forming-disc-torn-central-stars.html
9/23/2020 10:00 AMElectric current is everywhere, from powering homes to controlling the plasma that fuels fusion reactions to possibly giving rise to vast cosmic magnetic fields. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have found that electrical currents can form in ways not known before. The novel findings could give researchers greater ability to bring the fusion energy that drives the sun and stars to Earth.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-unexpected-electrical-current-stabilize-fusion.html
9/23/2020 12:00 PMA collaboration of researchers based in Kumamoto University, Japan have discovered microdiamonds in the Nishisonogi metamorphic rock formation in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan. Microdiamonds in metamorphic rocks are important minerals because they form in continental collision zones and show that the crust has penetrated deeper than 120 km below the surface. This is the second area in the world, after the Italian Alps, that shows microdiamonds can form in metamorphic rock through subduction of oceanic plates.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-japan-geologic-history-discovery-metamorphic.html
9/23/2020 2:00 PMAs society contemplates going to the moon or Mars, there’s a rising debate as to whether it’s worth spending billions of dollars to send humans to other planets if a robot or rover can perform the necessary science.https://www.space.com/are-astronauts-worth-extra-money-mars.html
9/23/2020 4:00 PMTextbooks had to be rewritten. Members of the public were outraged. Our understanding of the solar system itself was forever changed on Aug. 24, 2006, when researchers at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) voted to reclassify Pluto, changing its status from a planet to a dwarf planet — a relegation that was largely seen as a demotion and which continues to have reverberations to this day.https://www.space.com/why-pluto-is-not-a-planet.html
9/23/2020 6:00 PMEveryone wants to get off the planet Earth and go explore the solar system, without realizing just how good we’ve got it down here. We’ve got a lot of air, more liquid water than we know what to do with, a nice strong planetary magnetic field that protects us cosmic radiation, and nice strong gravity that keeps our muscles strong and our bones thick. All things considered, Earth is pretty nice.https://www.space.com/venus-runaway-greenhouse-effect-earth-next.html
9/24/2020 8:00 AMTwo Harvard scientists have succeeded in creating an entirely new substance long believed to be the “holy grail” of physics — metallic hydrogen, a material of unparalleled power that could one day propel humans into deep space. The research was published in January in the journal Science.https://www.inverse.com/article/26969-scientists-create-metallic-hydrogen-100-years
9/24/2020 10:00 AMNine seconds. An eternity in some scientific experiments; an unimaginably small amount in the grand scheme of the universe. And just long enough to confound nuclear physicists studying the lifetime of the neutron.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-mystery-neutron-lifetime.html
9/24/2020 12:00 PMCeres, the closest dwarf planet to Earth, may be wrinkling as it shrinks, a new study finds. With a width of about 585 miles (940 kilometers), Ceres is both a dwarf planet and the largest member of the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter. Previous research found that the dwarf planet was not made up solely of rock, but composed partly of both icy and rocky material. (yes, we know this is an older article, but still interesting nonetheless)https://www.space.com/dwarf-planet-ceres-shrinking-wrinkling.html
9/24/2020 2:00 PMEarth’s magnetic north pole, which has been wandering faster than expected in recent years, has now crossed the prime meridian.http://www.geologyin.com/2019/12/earths-magnetic-north-pole-continues.html
9/24/2020 4:00 PMA new experiment confirms the existence of superionic ice, a black and hot form of water that might make up the bulk of giant icy planets.https://www.wired.com/story/a-bizarre-form-of-water-may-exist-all-over-the-universe/
9/24/2020 6:00 PMGlass is amorphous in nature—its atomic structure does not involve the repetitive arrangement seen in crystalline materials. But occasionally, it undergoes a process called devitrification, which is the transformation of a glass into a crystal—often an unwanted process in industries. The dynamics of devitrification remain poorly understood because the process can be extremely slow, spanning decades or more.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-devitrification-demystified.html
9/25/2020 8:00 AMThe camera core for the future Vera C. Rubin Observatory has snapped its first test photos, setting a new world record for the largest single shot by a giant digital camera. The imaging sensor array, which comprises the focal plane for Vera Rubin’s SUV-sized digital camera, snapped the 3,200-megapixel images during recent tests at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California. (“SLAC” stands for “Stanford Linear Accelerator Center,” the facility’s original name.)https://www.space.com/vera-rubin-observatory-record-breaking-first-photos.html
9/25/2020 10:00 AMCrews at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have taken the first 3,200-megapixel digital photos—the largest ever taken in a single shot—with an extraordinary array of imaging sensors that will become the heart and soul of the future camera of Vera C. Rubin Observatory.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-sensors-world-largest-digital-camera.html
9/25/2020 12:00 PMThe search for habitable exoplanets spans far and wide, pushing the limits of what our modern telescopes are capable of. But rest assured that we aren’t ignoring what’s in our own backyard. Researchers have kept diligent eyes on Alpha Centauri, the closest system to Earth that happens to house Sun-like stars. And now, a comprehensive study published in Research Notes of the AAS clears Alpha Centauri’s two brightest stars of a crucial habitability factor: dangerous X-ray radiation.https://astronomy.com/news/2018/06/alpha-centauri-system-could-have-favorable-conditions-for-life
9/25/2020 2:00 PMAn amateur astronomer has discovered a kilometer-wide asteroid that would create global devastation if it were to hit the Earth. Thankfully that won’t happen: the asteroid will miss our planet by 40 million kilometers as it passes on 10 September 2020, more than 100 times the distance between Earth and the Moon. But the fact that this relatively large near-Earth object, or NEO, wasn’t detected until now serves as a reminder that there’s much work to be done when it comes to defending our planet from dangerous asteroids.https://www.planetary.org/articles/planetary-society-grant-winner-discovers-large-asteroid
9/25/2020 4:00 PMFor the first time, climate scientists have compiled a continuous, high-fidelity record of variations in Earth’s climate extending 66 million years into the past. The record reveals four distinctive climate states, which the researchers dubbed Hothouse, Warmhouse, Coolhouse, and Icehouse.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-high-fidelity-earth-climate-history-current.html
9/25/2020 6:00 PMIn one of the most complex cosmic dances astronomers have yet spotted, three rings of gas and dust circle a trio of stars. The star system GW Orionis, located about 1,300 light-years away in the constellation Orion, includes a pair of young stars locked in a close do-si-do with a third star making loops around both. Around all three stars is a broken-apart disk of dust and gas where planets could one day form. Unlike the flat disk that gave rise to the planets in our solar system, GW Orionis’ disk consists of three loops, with a warped middle ring and an inner ring even more twisted at a jaunty angle to the other two.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/weird-warped-planet-forming-disk-orbits-three-stars
9/26/2020 8:00 AMA quark is an elementary subatomic particle; three of them make up a proton or a neutron. Some scientists base the suggested existence of quark stars (which would be made of quarks instead of complete protons or neutrons) on a famous conjecture by the eminent Princeton physicist Ed Witten. He said the true ground state of matter (in the sense of the lowest energy per particle) consists of a mixture of roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks, with enough electrons thrown in to ensure that this soup is electrically neutral. Although scientists have never demonstrated this conjecture to be true, many theoretical astrophysicists have run with it, imagining the potential implications for the heavens.https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2013/04/quark-star
9/26/2020 10:00 AMImagine a beam of energy traveling throughout the universe and frying everything in its path. This may sound a little bit like science fiction, but these beams of energy are real and pose a real (if remote) threat.https://astronomy.com/news/2016/08/maybe-black-holes-really-can-destroy-the-world
9/26/2020 12:00 PMA team of physicists believes that it’s found a way to bring a science fiction staple to life. According to new research, wormholes that are both large and stable enough for humans to traverse should be possible to create.https://futurism.com/the-byte/wormholes-large-enough-travel-through
9/26/2020 2:00 PMAround 100,000 years ago, the climate changed abruptly and the environment of Central-Eastern Europe shifted from forested to open steppe/taiga habitat, promoting the dispersal of wooly mammoth, wooly rhino and other cold adapted species from the Arctic. Neanderthals living in these territories suffered severe demographic contractions due to the new ecological conditions and only returned to the areas above 48° N latitude during climatic ameliorations. However, in spite of the discontinuous settlement, specific bifacial stone tools persisted in Central-Eastern Europe from the beginning of this ecological shift until the demise of the Neanderthals.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-oldest-neanderthal-dna-central-eastern-europe.html
9/26/2020 4:00 PMA team of European astrophysicists is suggesting that the universe could be filled with “boson stars,” which are theoretical, transparent objects made of boson particles.https://futurism.com/boson-stars-black-holes-invisible-stars
9/26/2020 6:00 PMLasing—the emission of a collimated light beam of light with a well-defined wavelength (color) and phase—results from a self-organization process, in which a collection of emission centers synchronizes itself to produce identical light particles (photons). A similar self-organized synchronization phenomenon can also lead to the generation of coherent vibrations—a phonon laser, where phonon denotes, in analogy to photons, the quantum particles of sound.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-phonon-laser-coherent-vibrations-self-breathing.html
9/27/2020 8:00 AMResearchers have shown why intense, pure red colors in nature are mainly produced by pigments, instead of the structural color that produces bright blue and green hues.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-blues-greens-brightest-colous-nature.html
9/27/2020 10:00 AMhttps://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/why-the-world-has-three-dimensions
9/27/2020 12:00 PMFor more than 100 years, astronomers have been observing a curious star located some 190 light years away from Earth in the constellation Libra. It rapidly journeys across the sky at 800,000 mph (1.3 million kilometers per hour). But more interesting than that, HD 140283 — or Methuselah as it’s commonly known — is also one of the universe’s oldest known stars.https://www.space.com/how-can-a-star-be-older-than-the-universe.html
9/27/2020 2:00 PMUntil 1920, humans had no real sense of how the sun and stars create their vast amounts of energy. Then, in October of that year, Arthur Stanley Eddington, an English astrophysicist, penned an essay elegantly titled “ The Internal Constitution of the Stars.” “A star is drawing on some vast reservoir of energy by means unknown,” he wrote. “This reservoir can scarcely be other than the sub-atomic energy which, it is known, exists abundantly in all matter; we sometimes dream that man will one day learn how to release it and use it for his service.”https://www.wired.com/story/fusion-energy-iter-reactor-ready-to-shine/
9/27/2020 4:00 PMA number of NASA scientists are currently researching the feasibility of warp drive (and EMdrive and a number of other modes of faster than light travel); however, most scientists think that such forms of space travel simply aren’t viable, thanks to the fundamental physics of our universe.https://dailygalaxy.com/2018/09/nasa-faster-than-speed-of-light-space-travel-will-warp-bubbles-enable-dreams-of-interstellar-voyages/
9/27/2020 6:00 PMFirst, it’s still possible the universe is finite. All we know for sure (mostly for sure) is that it’s bigger than we can observe, essentially because the farthest edges of the universe we can see don’t look like edges. The observable universe is still huge, but it has limits. That’s because we know the universe isn’t infinitely old — we know the Big Bang occurred some 13.8 billion years ago.https://astronomy.com/news/2020/03/is-the-universe-infinite
9/28/2020 8:00 AMResearchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, together with colleagues from other universities, have discovered the possibility to prepare one-atom thin platinum for use as a chemical sensor. The results were recently published in the scientific journal Advanced Material Interfaces.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-atom-thin-platinum-great-chemical-sensor.html
9/28/2020 10:00 AMThe fast-warming Arctic has started to transition from a predominantly frozen state into an entirely different climate, according to a comprehensive new study of Arctic conditions.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-arctic-transitioning-climate-state.html
9/28/2020 12:00 PMSaturn may be the most famous celestial object sporting a flashy ring, but planets aren’t the only ones accessorizing. Entire galaxies, too, can have massive rings encircling them. A team of researchers has found an enormous gas ring around a galaxy called AGC 203001 that’s a couple hundred million light-years away. The gas ring is bigger than usuhttps://astronomy.com/news/2020/01/a-ring-of-gas-discovered-circling-a-galaxy
9/28/2020 2:00 PMA team of researchers from Germany, Italy and Hungary has tested a theory that suggests gravity is the force behind quantum collapse and has found no evidence to support it. In their paper published in the journal Nature Physics, the researchers describe underground experiments they conducted to test the impact of gravity on wave functions and what their work showed them.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-function-collapse-gravity.html
9/28/2020 4:00 PMUltraviolet light endangers the integrity of human genetic information and may cause skin cancer. For the first time, researchers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have demonstrated that DNA damage may also occur far away from the point of incidence of the radiation. They produced an artificially modeled DNA sequence in new architecture and succeeded in detecting DNA damage at a distance of 30 DNA building blocks.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-dna-migrating-energy.html
9/28/2020 6:00 PMMore than 230 years ago astronomer William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus and two of its moons. Using the Herschel Space Observatory, a group of astronomers led by Örs H. Detre of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy now has succeeded in determining physical properties of the five main moons of Uranus. The measured infrared radiation, which is generated by the Sun heating their surfaces, suggests that these moons resemble dwarf planets like Pluto. The team developed a new analysis technique that extracted the faint signals from the moons next to Uranus, which is more than a thousand times brighter.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-uranian-moons.html
9/29/2020 8:00 AMSolar Cycle 25 has begun. During a media event on Tuesday, experts from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) discussed their analysis and predictions about the new solar cycle—and how the coming upswing in space weather will impact our lives and technology on Earth, as well as astronauts in space.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-solar-nasa-noaa-scientists.html
9/29/2020 10:00 AMMost of the space in the Milky Way Galaxy can be pretty lonely — a dull, dark void. But our own neighborhood stands out as among the more intriguing places in the universe. Recently, with new telescopic technologies, astronomers have made big strides toward finding all our stellar neighbors. Knowing the stellar cast, they can then project this information into the galaxy at large to help us learn how stars, and even planets, are born and live out their lives. As a result of these studies, astronomers are now learning how our own Sun fits into the overall picture.https://astronomy.com/magazine/2019/10/meet–the-stars-next-door
9/29/2020 12:00 PMInvaders, pirates, warriors—the history books taught us that Vikings were brutal predators who travelled by sea from Scandinavia to pillage and raid their way across Europe and beyond.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-world-largest-dna-sequencing-viking.html
9/29/2020 2:00 PMAround 120,000 years ago in what is now northern Saudi Arabia, a small band of homo sapiens stopped to drink and forage at a shallow lake that was also frequented by camels, buffalo and elephants bigger than any species seen today.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-ancient-footprints-saudi-arabia-humans.html
9/29/2020 4:00 PMScientists and birders have found large numbers of migratory species disoriented and dead in recent weeks. Here’s what we know so far.https://www.audubon.org/news/the-southwest-facing-unprecedented-migratory-bird-die
9/29/2020 6:00 PMSome far-off alien planets could be made of diamonds, scientists say. With the right conditions like the presence of water heat and pressure, exoplanets with high concentrations of carbon could turn into diamonds, scientists found in a new study. These exoplanets could also form silica, an oxide of silicon that is found as quartz in nature.https://www.space.com/carbon-exoplanets-made-of-diamonds.html
9/30/2020 8:00 AMThe exploration of Pluto wasn’t easy, but it sure was worth it. It took 14 years (1989 to 2003), about a dozen different mission concept proposals, and the weight of the first National Academy Planetary Science Decadal Survey just to unleash the funding. After a fierce competition among rival teams, NASA ultimately selected New Horizons as its Pluto flyby mission.https://astronomy.com/magazine/2019/10/return-to-pluto
9/30/2020 10:00 AMBeijing-based private space mining company Origin Space is launching its first ever “space mining robot” in November on top of a Long March series rocket. The concept of excavating resources in space is highly controversial. Many scientists have called for the solar system to be protected from such practices — but that hasn’t stopped global superpowers, particularly the US and China, from investigating ways to do so.https://futurism.com/the-byte/chinese-startup-space-mining-robot
9/30/2020 12:00 PMAn international effort that brought together more than 60 ice, ocean and atmosphere scientists from three dozen international institutions has generated new estimates of how much of an impact Earth’s melting ice sheets could have on global sea levels by 2100. If greenhouse gas emissions continue apace, Greenland and Antarctica’s ice sheets could together contribute more than 15 inches (38 centimeters) of global sea level rise – and that’s beyond the amount that has already been set in motion by Earth’s warming climate.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/emissions-could-add-15-inches-to-2100-sea-level-rise-nasa-led-study-finds
9/30/2020 2:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=saved&v=1233208520361020
9/30/2020 4:00 PMCould life survive on a planet orbiting a black hole? There could potentially be a habitable zone around a supermassive black hole. But the intense gravity poses unique dangers.https://astronomy.com/news/2019/10/could-life-survive-on-a-planet-orbiting-a-black-hole
9/30/2020 6:00 PMWe may now have direct evidence that planets can survive unscathed the violent churn that attends their host star’s death. Astronomers have spotted signs of an intact giant planet circling a superdense stellar corpse known as a white dwarf, a new study reports.https://www.space.com/giant-exoplanet-found-orbiting-white-dwarf-wd-1856b.html
10/1/2020 8:00 AMSupercooled water is really two liquids in one. That’s the conclusion reached by a research team at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory after making the first-ever measurements of liquid water at temperatures much colder than its typical freezing point.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-supercooled-stable-liquid-scientists.html
10/1/2020 10:00 AMT10
10/1/2020 12:00 PMNew composite images made from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft are the most detailed global infrared views ever produced of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. And data used to build those images provides strong evidence that the northern hemisphere of the moon has been resurfaced with ice from its interior.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/infrared-eyes-on-enceladus-hints-of-fresh-ice-in-northern-hemisphere
10/1/2020 2:00 PMA rogue planet long escaped from its home stellar system may not be so alone on its trip.https://astronomy.com/news/2017/07/rogue-binary-planets
10/1/2020 4:00 PMAdding calcium to a composite graphene-substrate structure creates a high transition-temperature (Tc) superconductor. In a new study, an Australian-led team has for the first time confirmed what actually happens to those calcium atoms: Surprising everyone, the calcium goes underneath both the upper graphene sheet and a lower buffer sheet, floating the graphene on a bed of calcium atoms.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-graphene-sheet-calcium-atoms.html
10/1/2020 6:00 PMA research team from Caltech and the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering has demonstrated a promising way to efficiently convert carbon dioxide into ethylene—an important chemical used to produce plastics, solvents, cosmetics and other important products globally.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-effective-pathway-carbon-dioxide-ethylene.html
10/2/2020 8:00 AMAstronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) have made the first direct geometric measurement of the distance to a magnetar within our Milky Way Galaxy—a measurement that could help determine if magnetars are the sources of the long-mysterious Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs).https://phys.org/news/2020-09-vlba-distance-magnetar.html
10/2/2020 10:00 AMT10
10/2/2020 12:00 PMHow big might black holes get? A team of scientists now suggests black holes could reach what they call “stupendously large” sizes, each harboring the mass of 100 billion suns or more. Discovering such gargantuan black holes may shed light on the nature of a significant fraction of the mysterious dark matter that makes up four-fifths of the matter in the universe, the researchers said.https://www.space.com/black-holes-can-reach-stupendously-large-sizes.html
10/2/2020 2:00 PMOur Milky Way Galaxy wheels within the Local Group of galaxies in a relatively quiet corner of the cosmos. The vast Virgo Cluster of galaxies, some 55 million light-years away, plays city center to our boondocks. The Virgo Cluster holds an amazing 2,000 “island universes.” Our little Local Group, by contrast, contains roughly 50 confirmed and possibly 30 unconfirmed galaxies, most of them unimpressive dwarfs.https://astronomy.com/magazine/greatest-mysteries/2019/07/49-how-many-galaxies-are-in-our-group
10/2/2020 4:00 PMPhysicists from Lancaster University have established why objects moving through superfluid helium-3 lack a speed limit in a continuation of earlier Lancaster research.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-limit-superfluid-universe.html
10/2/2020 6:00 PM“We found six boulders ranging in size from 5 to 14 feet (about 1.5 to 4.3 meters) scattered across Bennu’s southern hemisphere and near the equator,” said Daniella DellaGiustina of the Lunar & Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson. “These boulders are much brighter than the rest of Bennu and match material from Vesta.”https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/bennu-vesta-meteorites
10/3/2020 8:00 AMInstead of trying to build settlements on the surface of the Moon or Mars, a team of engineers believes that we ought to expand humanity’s reach into the cosmos by constructing orbital habitats from scratch.https://futurism.com/the-byte/space-habitat-design-simulates-gravity-spinning
10/3/2020 10:00 AMT10
10/3/2020 12:00 PMThere are two main approaches that humanity can take to living in space. The one more commonly portrayed is colonizing other celestial bodies such as the moon and Mars. That approach comes with some major disadvantages, including dealing with toxic soils, clingy dust and gravity wells.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-space-habitat-artificial-gravity-enlarged.html
10/3/2020 2:00 PMIn a paper published today in Nature Astronomy, researchers report the first ever clear images of nanojets — bright thin lights that travel perpendicular to the magnetic structures in the solar atmosphere, called the corona — in a process that reveals the existence of one of the potential coronal heating candidates: nanoflares.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/nasa-s-iris-spots-nanojets-shining-light-on-heating-the-solar-corona
10/3/2020 4:00 PMA team of scientists at MIT say they’ve discovered a “Pi Earth” — an Earth-sized planet that orbits its star every 3.14 Earth days. The team found the planet, dubbed K2-315b, by analyzing 2017 data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope’s K2 mission.https://futurism.com/the-byte/astronomers-discover-pi-earth-planet-orbits-3-14-days
10/3/2020 6:00 PMThe turbulence model called Gyrokinetic Electromagnetic Numerical Experiment (GENE), developed at Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) at Garching, Germany, has proven to be very useful for the theoretical description of turbulence in the plasma of tokamak-type fusion devices. Extended for the more complex geometry of stellarator-type devices, computer simulations with GENE now indicate a new method to reduce plasma turbulence in stellarator plasmas. This could significantly increase the efficiency of a future fusion power plant.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-simulations-stellarator-plasmas.html
10/4/2020 8:00 AMOf all the rocky, inner worlds of the solar system, Venus is the most challenging to explore. With surface temperatures reaching a bewildering 867 degrees Fahrenheit (464 degrees Celsius), even the most hardened landers can’t survive for long. But a new idea, called the Calypso Venus Scout, calls for a bold new mission design: a science probe dangling 20 miles (32 kilometers) below a cloud-borne balloon.https://www.space.com/venus-calypso-surface-survey-idea.html
10/4/2020 10:00 AMT10
10/4/2020 12:00 PMThis year’s Arctic sea ice cover shrank to the second-lowest extent since modern record keeping began in the late 1970s. An analysis of satellite data by NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder shows that the 2020 minimum extent, which was likely reached on Sept. 15, measured 1.44 million square miles (3.74 million square kilometers).https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/2020-arctic-sea-ice-minimum-at-second-lowest-on-record
10/4/2020 2:00 PMEgyptian archaeologists have unearthed more than two dozen ancient coffins in a vast necropolis south of Cairo.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-egypt-ancient-sarcophagi-saqqara.html
10/4/2020 4:00 PMUntil now, the history of superconducting materials has been a tale of two types: s-wave and d-wave. Now, Cornell researchers—led by Brad Ramshaw, the Dick & Dale Reis Johnson Assistant Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences—have discovered a possible third type: g-wave.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-superconductor.html
10/4/2020 6:00 PMThe toughest organisms on Earth, called extremophiles, can survive extreme conditions like extreme dryness (desiccation), extreme cold, space vacuum, acid, or even high-level radiation. So far, the toughest of all seems to be the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans—able to survive doses of radiation a thousand times greater than those fatal to humans. But to this date, scientists remained puzzled by how radio-resistance could have evolved in several organisms on our planet, naturally protected from solar radiation by its magnetic field. While some scientists suggest that radio-resistance in extremophile organisms could have evolved along with other kinds of resistance, such as resistance to desiccation, a question remained: which genes are specifically involved in radio-resistance?https://phys.org/news/2020-09-evolution-radio-resistance-complicated-previously-thought.html
10/5/2020 8:00 AMIn 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration delivered the first image of a black hole, revealing M87*—the supermassive object in the center of the M87 galaxy. The team has now used the lessons learned last year to analyze the archival data sets from 2009-2013, some of them not published before.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-analysis-black-hole-reveals-shadow.html
10/5/2020 10:00 AMT10
10/5/2020 12:00 PMBringing the power of the sun to Earth requires sound theory, good engineering, and a little finesse. The process entails trapping charged, ultra-hot gas known as plasma so its particles can fuse and release enormous amounts of energy. The most widely used facilities for this process are doughnut-shaped tokamaks that hold plasma in place with strong magnets that are precisely shaped and positioned. But errors in the shaping or placement of these magnets can lead to poor confinement and loss of plasma, shutting down fusion reactions.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-scientists-technique-advance-quest-fusion.html
10/5/2020 2:00 PMNASA and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) are launching a spacecraft to the far side of the Moon so that they can look back into the very first days of the universe. In particular, the spacecraft DAPPER will hunt for radio signals given off during the “dark ages” of the universe, or the era 380,000 years after the Big Bang when there were no stars or galaxies to light up the universe, according to a press release. If it finds them, DAPPER could give us a new level of understanding of how stars formed in the first place.https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-heading-far-side-moon-ancient-universe
10/5/2020 4:00 PMThe warmer it gets, the faster Antarctica loses ice—and much of it will disappear forever. Consequences for the world’s coastal cities and cultural heritage sites would be detrimental, from London to Mumbai, and from New York to Shanghai. That’s the conclusion of a team of researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam University and New York’s Columbia University in their new study, published in Nature, on how much warming the Antarctic ice sheet can survive.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-stability-antarctica-reveals-high-long-term.html
10/5/2020 6:00 PMResearchers at Washington State University have predicted how and where the Asian giant hornet, an invasive newcomer to the Pacific Northwest, popularly dubbed the “murder hornet,” could spread and find ideal habitat, both in the United States and globally.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-scientists-potential-habitat-invasive-asian.html
10/6/2020 8:00 AMGeronimo Villanueva, a planetary scientist from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland has created stunning simulations of what sunsets would look like on a variety of planets.https://futurism.com/the-byte/sunsets-on-other-planets
10/6/2020 10:00 AMT10
10/6/2020 12:00 PMAs COVID-19 cases continue to rise worldwide, it is increasingly urgent to understand how climate impacts the continued spread of the coronavirus, particularly as winter virus infections are more common and countries in the northern hemisphere will soon see cooler temperatures.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-evaporation-critical-coronavirus-transmission-weather.html
10/6/2020 2:00 PMA uniquely preserved prehistoric mudhole could hold the oldest-ever human footprints on the Arabian Peninsula, scientists say. The seven footprints, found amidst a clutter of hundreds of prehistoric animal prints, are estimated to be 115,000 years old.https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/archaeology/amp34115736/ancient-human-footprints-discovered-saudi-arabia-migration-history/
10/6/2020 4:00 PMNew light is being shed on a little-known role of Y chromosome genes, specific to males, that could explain why men suffer differently than women from various diseases, including COVID-19.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-male-chromosome-thought.html
10/6/2020 6:00 PMhttps://astronomy.com/news/2019/03/physicists-suggest-hunting-dark-matter-fossils-deep-underground
10/7/2020 8:00 AMFuture moon explorers will be bombarded with two to three times more radiation than astronauts aboard the International Space Station, a health hazard that will require thick-walled shelters for protection, scientists reported.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-moon.html
10/7/2020 10:00 AMT10
10/7/2020 12:00 PMWhy are some tarantulas so vividly colored? Scientists have puzzled over why these large, hairy spiders, active primarily during the evening and at night-time, would sport such vibrant blue and green colouration—especially as they were long thought to be unable to differentiate between colors, let alone possess true color vision.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-scientists-tarantulas-vivid-blues-greens.html
10/7/2020 2:00 PMUnusual flashes of gamma rays could reveal that what appear to be giant black holes are actually huge wormholes, a new study finds.https://www.space.com/black-holes-as-wormholes-gamma-ray-flashes
10/7/2020 4:00 PMThrough a one-of-a-kind experiment at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, nuclear physicists have precisely measured the weak interaction between protons and neutrons. The result quantifies the weak force theory as predicted by the Standard Model of Particle Physics.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-scientists-higher-precision-weak-protons.html
10/7/2020 6:00 PMBlack holes are some of the strangest and most fascinating objects in outer space. They’re extremely dense, with such strong gravitational attraction that even light cannot escape their grasp if it comes near enough.https://www.space.com/15421-black-holes-facts-formation-discovery-sdcmp.html
10/8/2020 8:00 AMIn April 2019, a team of scientists showed off a world’s first: an image of a black hole in spectacular detail, taken using a massive telescope array spread out across the globe known as the Event Horizon Telescope. Almost a year and a half later, we get to see something even more glorious: an animation made up of multiple images of the black hole, transforming the static circular blob of yellow-orange light into a “wobbling” ring.https://futurism.com/astronomers-movie-wobbling-black-hole
10/8/2020 10:00 AMT10
10/8/2020 12:00 PMNASA’S Juno spacecraft snapped this “dramatic image” of an eclipse shadow passing over Jupiter, caused by its volcanic moon Io.https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1338443/NASA-news-Juno-spacecraft-Jupiter-pictures-Io-moon-lunar-eclipse
10/8/2020 2:00 PMIt’s a perennial sci-fi favorite: other worlds, other universes, other possibilities, right beyond the bounds of the known cosmos or just a flick of a magic device away. Maybe the other worlds are eerily similar to own except for some quirky little change in history. Maybe they’re radically different, with new and weird and wonderful kinds of life. Maybe they’re so different that the basic rules of physics don’t even apply there.https://www.space.com/inflating-universe-could-create-multiverse.html
10/8/2020 4:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/spacecom/posts/10157451591986466
10/8/2020 6:00 PMAfter a four-year journey, NASA’s robotic spacecraft OSIRIS-REx will descend to asteroid Bennu’s boulder-strewn surface on October 20, touching down for a few seconds to collect rock and dust samples, the agency said.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-probe-asteroid-bennu-october.html
10/9/2020 8:00 AMA team of researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, have succeeded in entangling two very different quantum objects. The result has several potential applications in ultra-precise sensing and quantum communication and is now published in Nature Physics.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-quantum-entanglement-distant-large.html
10/9/2020 10:00 AMT10
10/9/2020 12:00 PMA top goal in cosmology is to precisely measure the total amount of matter in the universe, a daunting exercise for even the most mathematically proficient. A team led by scientists at the University of California, Riverside, has now done just that.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-scientists-precisely-total-amount-universe.html
10/9/2020 2:00 PMToday there are more than 7 million electric vehicles (EVs) in operation around the world, compared with only about 20,000 a decade ago. It’s a massive change—but according to a group of University of Toronto Engineering researchers, it won’t be nearly enough to address the global climate crisis.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-electric-vehicles-wont-climate.html
10/9/2020 4:00 PMIn a delightful alignment of astronomy and mathematics, scientists at MIT and elsewhere have discovered a “pi Earth”—an Earth-sized planet that zips around its star every 3.14 days, in an orbit reminiscent of the universal mathematics constant.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-astronomers-earth-sized-pi-planet-day.html
10/9/2020 6:00 PMThe scientists who re-engineered the plastic-eating enzyme PETase have now created an enzyme ‘cocktail’ which can digest plastic up to six times faster. A second enzyme, found in the same rubbish dwelling bacterium that lives on a diet of plastic bottles, has been combined with PETase to speed up the breakdown of plastic.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-plastic-eating-enzyme-cocktail-heralds-plastic.html
10/10/2020 8:00 AM“Zombie fires” and burning of fire-resistant vegetation are new features driving Arctic fires—with strong consequences for the global climate—warn international fire scientists in a commentary published in Nature Geoscience.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-arctic.html
10/10/2020 10:00 AMT10
10/10/2020 12:00 PMA network of salty ponds may be gurgling beneath Mars’ South Pole alongside a large underground lake, raising the prospect of tiny, swimming Martian life. Italian scientists reported their findings Monday, two years after identifying what they believed to be a large buried lake. They widened their coverage area by a couple hundred miles, using even more data from a radar sounder on the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-salty-lake-ponds-gurgling-beneath.html
10/10/2020 2:00 PMUnlike secondary batteries that need to be recharged, fuel cells are a type of eco-friendly power generation system that produce electricity directly from electrochemical reactions using hydrogen as fuel and oxygen as oxidant. There are various types of fuel cells, differing in operating temperatures and electrolyte materials. Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), which use a ceramic electrolyte, are receiving increasing attention. Because they operate at high temperatures around 700 degrees Celsius, they offer the highest efficiency among fuel cell types, and can also be used to produce hydrogen by steam decomposition. For the commercialization of this technology, further improvement of cell performance is necessary, and novel high-temperature catalyst materials are highly anticipated.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-high-performance-single-atom-catalysts-high-temperature-fuel.html
10/10/2020 4:00 PMUsing observations made with the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Garafía, La Palma, Canary Islands), and with the ATACAMA Large Millimeter/submillimetre Array (ALMA), in Chile, astronomers have found the first galaxy whose ultraviolet luminosity is comparable to that of a quasar. The galaxy, called BOSS-EUVLG1, has a red-shift of 2.47. This is a measure of the reddening of the light coming from the galaxy, and can be used to find its distance: the further away the galaxy, the greater the value. For BOSS-EUVLG1, the value of 2.47 means that the galaxy has been observed when the universe was some 2000 million years old, around 20% of its present age.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-astronomers-galaxy-ultraviolet-luminosity-quasar.html
10/10/2020 6:00 PMNASA has selected SpaceX to launch a space science mission and several secondary payloads, the latest in a series of wins by SpaceX for NASA science missions. NASA announced Sept. 28 it awarded a contract to SpaceX for the launch of its Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) spacecraft in 2024 from Cape Canaveral on a Falcon 9.https://spacenews.com/spacex-wins-launch-contract-for-nasa-space-science-mission/
10/11/2020 8:00 AMThe United Arab Emirates plans to send an unmanned spacecraft to the moon in 2024, a top Emirati official said Tuesday, the latest gamble in the stars by the oil-rich nation that could see it become only the fourth nation on Earth to accomplish that goal.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-arab-emirates-spacecraft-moon.html
10/11/2020 10:00 AMA study of comet motions indicates that the solar system has a second alignment plane. Analytical investigation of the orbits of long-period comets shows that the aphelia of the comets, the point where they are farthest from the Sun, tend to fall close to either the well-known ecliptic plane where the planets reside or a newly discovered “empty ecliptic.” This has important implications for models of how comets originally formed in the solar system.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-alignment-plane-solar.html
10/11/2020 12:00 PMTwo researchers advocate sending a quick mission to Venus to try and quell debate over whether our sister planet’s middle atmosphere does in fact harbor some sort of microbial life. To their credit, instead of standing around grinding their teeth over the issue, Andreas Hein and Manasvi Lingam, have already set forth a new balloon mission proposal specifically geared toward confirming the detection of phosphine (PH3) in Venus’ atmosphere. If funded, they say their mission could launch by 2022.https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2020/09/28/low-cost-privately-funded-balloon-mission-could-scope-out-venus-life-by-2022/
10/11/2020 2:00 PMFor the first time, Senckenberg scientist Mónica Solórzano-Kraemer, together with lead authors David Peris and Kathrin Janssen of the University of Bonn and additional colleagues from Spain and Norway, successfully extracted genetic material from insects that were embedded in six- and two-year-old resin samples. DNA—in particular, DNA from extinct animals—is an important tool in the identification of species. In the future, the researchers plan to use their new methods on older resin inclusions, as well.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-dna-insects-embedded-resin.html
10/11/2020 4:00 PMA team of researchers at MIT and other institutions say their “SPARC” compact fusion reactor should actually work — at least in theory, as they argue in a series of recently released research papers.https://futurism.com/mit-researchers-fusion-reactor-very-likely-work
10/11/2020 6:00 PMNASA has unlocked nuclear fusion on a tiny scale, with a phenomenon called lattice confinement fusion that takes place in the narrow channels between atoms. In the reaction, the common nuclear fuel deuterium gets trapped in the “empty” atomic space in a solid metal. What results is a Goldilocks effect that’s neither supercooled nor superheated, but where atoms reach fusion-level energy.https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a34096117/nasa-nuclear-lattice-confiment-fusion/
10/12/2020 8:00 AMIn the disappointing absence of little green aliens on one of Jupiter’s moons or a canal-building civilization on Mars, hunting for life beyond Earth stretches our scientific and technological prowess to the limits. If we do find life out there, it will be tiny, on the molecular scale.https://www.space.com/alien-life-search-instrument-organicam
10/12/2020 10:00 AMFor millennia, humans have gazed up at the stars and wondered what it would be like to journey to them. And while sending astronauts beyond the solar system remains a distant dream, humanity has already launched five robotic probes that are on paths to interstellar space.https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/5-nasa-spacecraft-that-are-leaving-our-solar-system-for-good
10/12/2020 12:00 PMWhen the brightness of the star Betelgeuse dropped dramatically a few months ago, some observers suspected an impending supernova—a stellar explosion that could also cause damage on Earth. While Betelgeuse has returned to normal, physicists from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have found evidence of a supernova that exploded near the Earth around 2.5 million years ago.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-stellar-explosion-earth-proximity.html
10/12/2020 2:00 PMA team of astronomers at the University of Cambridge was on the lookout for new exoplanets when they came across an exciting accidental discovery: They found the smallest star measured to this day. This tiny new star, which is being called EBLM J0555-57Ab, is about 600 light-years from Earth, and has a comparable mass (85 Jupiter masses) to the estimated mass of TRAPPST-1. The new star, though, has a radius about 30 percent smaller. Like TRAPPIST-1, EBLM J0555-57Ab is likely an ultracool M-dwarf star.https://astronomy.com/news/2017/07/tiny-new-star
10/12/2020 4:00 PMStunning Arnhem Land rock art images including three rare depictions of bilbies and a dugong have been described by researchers in a new paper. Led by Professor Paul Taçon, Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and Griffith University Chair in Rock Art Research, the team documented 572 previously unknown images ranging in age from 6000 to 9400 years from 87 sites from 2008 to 2018.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-arnhem-maliwawa-art-window.html
10/12/2020 6:00 PMThe Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is renowned for the hunt for and discovery of the Higgs boson, but in the 10 years since the machine collided protons at an energy higher than previously achieved at a particle accelerator, researchers have been using it to try to hunt down an equally exciting particle: the hypothetical particle that may make up an invisible form of matter called dark matter, which is five times more prevalent than ordinary matter and without which there would be no universe as we know it. The LHC dark-matter searches have so far come up empty handed, as have non-collider searches, but the incredible work and skill put by the LHC researchers into finding it has led them to narrow down many of the regions where the particle may lie hidden—necessary milestones on the path to a discovery.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-ground-dark.html
10/13/2020 8:00 AMPhysicists at Aalto University and VTT Technical Research Center of Finland have developed a new detector for measuring energy quanta at unprecedented resolution. This discovery could help bring quantum computing out of the laboratory and into real-world applications.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-detector-breakthrough-boundaries-quantum.html
10/13/2020 10:00 AMWith the help of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have found six galaxies lying around a supermassive black hole when the Universe was less than a billion years old. This is the first time such a close grouping has been seen so soon after the Big Bang and the finding helps us better understand how supermassive black holes, one of which exists at the centre of our Milky Way, formed and grew to their enormous sizes so quickly. It supports the theory that black holes can grow rapidly within large, web-like structures which contain plenty of gas to fuel them.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-large-telescope-galaxies-web-supermassive.html
10/13/2020 12:00 PMExperts in Japan have devised a simple way to glean more detailed information out of standard medical imaging scans. A research team made up of atomic physicists and nuclear medicine experts at the University of Tokyo and the National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS) has designed a timer that can enable positron emission tomography (PET) scanners to detect the oxygen concentration of tissues throughout patients’ bodies. This upgrade to PET scanners may lead to a future of better cancer treatment by quickly identifying parts of tumors with more aggressive cell growth.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-life-antimatter-particles-cancer-treatment.html
10/13/2020 2:00 PMThe avian cortex had been hiding in plain sight all along. Humans were just too birdbrained to see it.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bird-brains-are-far-more-humanlike-than-once-thought/
10/13/2020 4:00 PMWhen a disk of material spins in the cosmos, how do the objects involved react? Researchers recently used a giant swirling tank of water to find out.https://astronomy.com/news/2019/02/scientists-finally-confirm-a-big-theory-about-solar-system-formation
10/13/2020 6:00 PMA group led by researchers at Butantan Institute in Brazil and supported by FAPESP has described for the first time the presence of venom glands in the mouth of an amphibian. The legless animal is a caecilian and lives underground. It has tooth-related glands that, when compressed during biting, release a secretion into its prey—earthworms, insect larvae, small amphibians and snakes, and even rodent pupshttps://phys.org/news/2020-10-venom-glands-similar-snakes-amphibians.html
10/14/2020 8:00 AMThe power of the sun, wind and sea may soon combine to produce clean-burning hydrogen fuel, according to a team of Penn State researchers. The team integrated water purification technology into a new proof-of-concept design for a sea water electrolyzer, which uses an electric current to split apart the hydrogen and oxygen in water molecules.https://phys.org/news/2020-09-membranes-salt-sea-fuel.html
10/14/2020 10:00 AMA team of University of Arkansas physicists has successfully developed a circuit capable of capturing graphene’s thermal motion and converting it into an electrical current.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-physicists-circuit-limitless-power-graphene.html
10/14/2020 12:00 PMYou can help NASA’s newest planet-hunting mission do its otherworldly work. The space agency just launched a citizen-science project called Planet Patrol, which asks volunteers around the world to sort through images collected by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).https://www.space.com/planet-patrol-nasa-tess-exoplanet-volunteers
10/14/2020 2:00 PMAs kids, we learn there are four seasons, but researchers at the Stanford School of Medicine have found evidence to suggest that the human body doesn’t see it this way.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-human-biology-registers-seasons.html
10/14/2020 4:00 PMA group of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory has discovered a way to convert a common byproduct of the paper manufacturing process into valuable chemical precursors for making nylon. The process is much more environmentally friendly in terms of the solvent(s) used and the energy inputs than other methods and provides a useful alternative to burning waste products of pulping.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-paper-valuable-chemicals.html
10/14/2020 6:00 PMOne of the key challenges in developing effective, targeted cancer treatments is the heterogeneity of the cancer cells themselves. This variation makes it difficult for the immune system to recognize, respond to and actively fight against tumors. Now, however, new advances in nanotechnology are making it possible to deliver targeted, personalized “vaccines” to treat cancer.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-nanotechology-personalized-vaccination-cancer.html
10/15/2020 8:00 AMThe vast majority of planets near foreign stars are discovered by astronomers with the help of sophisticated methods. The exoplanet does not appear in the image, but reveals itself indirectly in the spectrum. A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institutes for Astronomy and Extraterrestrial Physics has now succeeded in obtaining the first direct confirmation of a previously discovered exoplanet using the method of radial velocity measurement. Using the the GRAVITY instrument at the VLT telescopes in Chile, the astronomers observed the faint glint of the planet Beta Pictoris c, some 63 light-years away from Earth, next to the bright rays of its mother star. The researchers can now derive both the brightness and the dynamic mass of an exoplanet from these observations and thus better narrow down the formation models of these objects.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-astronomers-reveal-image-beta-pictoris.html
10/15/2020 10:00 AMRUDN mathematicians analyzed the properties of gravitational waves in a generalized affine-metrical space (an algebraic construction operating on the notions of a vector and a point) similarly to the properties of electromagnetic waves in Minkowski space-time. They report the possibility of transmitting information with the help of nonmetricity waves and transferring it spatially without distortions. The discovery could lead to a new means of data transfer in space, e.g., between space stations.https://phys.org/news/2018-10-mathematicians-possibility-gravitational.html
10/15/2020 12:00 PMEarth is not necessarily the best planet in the universe. Researchers have identified two dozen planets outside our solar system that may have conditions more suitable for life than our own. Some of these orbit stars that may be better than even our sun.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-planets-life-earth.html
10/15/2020 2:00 PMEurope’s new telescope studying alien planets has created its first detailed portrait of a world, and it’s a weird one: hot and tilted around a warped star.https://www.space.com/strange-alien-planet-wasp-189b-cheops-discovery
10/15/2020 4:00 PMWe don’t usually post pre-prints, but we couldn’t resist this one. A group of physicists from Georgia Tech went to Zoo Atlanta to watch animals urinating. To their surprise, they discovered that regardless of size, most mammals urinate for about the same amount of time (21 seconds), despite large differences in bladder volume, a phenomenon they term the “Law of Urination”. They explain this law using physics, and illustrate their explanation with an amazing video (below) that is absolutely a must-see.https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/regardless-of-bladder-size-all-mammals-pee-for-approximately-21-seconds-with-video-goodness
10/15/2020 6:00 PMQuantum mechanics arose in the 1920s, and since then scientists have disagreed on how best to interpret it. Many interpretations, including the Copenhagen interpretation presented by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, and in particular, von Neumann-Wigner interpretation, state that the consciousness of the person conducting the test affects its result. On the other hand, Karl Popper and Albert Einstein thought that an objective reality exists. Erwin Schrödinger put forward the famous thought experiment involving the fate of an unfortunate cat that aimed to describe the imperfections of quantum mechanics.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-quantum-mechanics-reality-person.html
10/16/2020 8:00 AMTo solve a 100-year puzzle in metallurgy about why single crystals show staged hardening while others don’t, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists took it down to the atomistic level.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-year-old-metallurgy-puzzle.html
10/16/2020 10:00 AMHumans haven’t developed genetic mutations for telepathy or superpowers just yet, but a new study shows our species is still evolving in unique ways and changes in the natural selection could be the major reason.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-forearm-artery-reveals-humans-evolving.html
10/16/2020 12:00 PMAstronomers have found compelling evidence that planets start to form while infant stars are still growing. The high-resolution image obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) shows a young proto-stellar disk with multiple gaps and rings of dust. This new result, just published in Nature, shows the youngest and most detailed example of dust rings acting as cosmic cradles, where the seeds of planets form and take hold.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-astronomers-evidence-planets-infant-stars.html
10/16/2020 2:00 PMSomething is raining gold across the universe – but no one knows what it is. A new study has found the most commonly-theorized origin of gold — collisions between neutron stars — can’t explain gold’s abundance either. So where’s the gold coming from? There are some other possibilities, including supernovas so intense they turn a star inside out. Unfortunately, even such strange phenomena can’t explain how blinged out the local universe is, the new study finds.https://www.space.com/where-did-gold-come-from.html
10/16/2020 4:00 PMThe moon may be hiding the scientific key to the mysterious past of our neighboring world, Venus. Scientists think that Earth and Venus were once awfully similar. But then, something happened on Venus to turn it into the greenhouse-effect driven planet it is today. And now, new research proposes that the evidence of precisely how that shift played out may be tucked away in rocky time capsules on the moon, flung there by ancient collisions.https://www.space.com/ancient-venus-rocks-on-moon
10/16/2020 6:00 PMAn international team of researchers led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has measured, with unprecedented accuracy, the gravitational redshift of the Sun, a change in frequency of the lines in the solar spectrum which is produced when the light escapes from the gravitational field of the Sun on its way to Earth. This work verifies one of the predictions of Einstein’s General Relativity.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-solar-spectrum-einstein-theory-relativity.html
10/17/2020 8:00 AMReducing drag means faster aircraft speeds and less fuel consumption—an important area of study for aerodynamicists such as Professor Bruecker, City’s Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair in Nature-Inspired Sensing and Flow Control for Sustainable Transport, and City’s Sir Richard Oliver BAE Systems Chair for Aeronautical Engineering. Through their biomimetic study, Professor Bruecker’s team has discovered that the fish-scale array produces a zig-zag motion of fluid in overlapping regions of the surface of the fish, which in turn causes periodic velocity modulation and a streaky flow that can eliminate Tollmien-Schlichting wave induced transition to reduce skin friction drag by more than 25 percent.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-aerodynamicists-reveal-link-fish-scales.html
10/17/2020 10:00 AMA new measurement of how quickly stars create carbon may trigger a major shift in our understanding of how stars evolve and die, how the elements are created, and even the origin and abundance of the building blocks of life.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-carbon-creation-astrophysics.html
10/17/2020 12:00 PMSecure telecommunications networks and rapid information processing make much of modern life possible. To provide more secure, faster, and higher-performance information sharing than is currently possible, scientists and engineers are designing next-generation devices that harness the rules of quantum physics. Those designs rely on single photons to encode and transmit information across quantum networks and between quantum chips. However, tools for generating single photons do not yet offer the precision and stability required for quantum information technology.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-electrical-trigger-identical-photons.html
10/17/2020 2:00 PMA tiny nanoparticle has been chilled to the max. Physicists cooled a nanoparticle to the lowest temperature allowed by quantum mechanics. The particle’s motion reached what’s known as the ground state, or lowest possible energy level.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/scientists-cooled-nanoparticle-quantum-limit-ground-state
10/17/2020 4:00 PMA research collaboration between Queen Mary University of London, the University of Cambridge and the Institute for High Pressure Physics in Troitsk has discovered the fastest possible speed of sound. The result- about 36 km per second—is around twice as fast as the speed of sound in diamond, the hardest known material in the world.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-scientists-upper-limit.html
10/17/2020 6:00 PMEarth’s periodic passage through the galaxy’s disk could initiate a series of events that ultimately lead to geological cataclysms and mass extinctions. (we know the article is from 2019, fascinating nonetheless)https://astronomy.com/magazine/2019/07/dark-matters–shadowy-effect–on-earth
10/18/2020 8:00 AMAt around 60 million light-years from Earth, the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy, NGC 1365, is captured beautifully in this image by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Located in the constellation of Fornax (the Furnace), the blue and fiery orange swirls show us where stars have just formed and the dusty sites of future stellar nurseries.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-hubble-swirls-stars.html
10/18/2020 10:00 AMBlack holes are perhaps the strangest, least-understood objects in our universe. With so much potential — being linked to everything from wormholes to new baby universes — they have sucked in physicists for decades.https://www.space.com/bizarre-charged-black-holes.html
10/18/2020 12:00 PMBill Nye, everybody’s favorite “science guy,” has teamed up with 4-H to take students to Mars (figuratively speaking.) 4-H is a network of youth organizations across the United States that provides educational opportunities. Every year, 4-H hosts the 4-H STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) Challenge (formerly known as 4-H National Youth Science Day). This year’s challenge — Mars Base Camp — marks the 13th annual event to date, and it will explore human space exploration and humanity’s efforts to reach the Red Planet.https://www.space.com/bill-nye-4-h-mars-base-camp.html
10/18/2020 2:00 PMResearchers have developed a tiny new machine that converts laser light into work. These optically powered machines self-assemble and could be used for nanoscale manipulation of tiny cargo for applications such as nanofluidics and particle sorting.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-nanoscale-machines.html
10/18/2020 4:00 PMOnly one in a hundred million stars makes the cut to be classified a Wolf-Rayet: ferociously bright, hot stars doomed to imminent collapse in a supernova explosion leaving only a dark remnant, such as a black hole. Rarest of all, even among Wolf-Rayets, are elegant binary pairs that, if the conditions are right, are able to pump out huge amounts of carbon dust driven by their extreme stellar winds. As the two stars orbit one another, the dust gets wrapped into a beautiful glowing sooty tail. Just a handful of these sculpted spiral plumes has ever been discovered.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-eye-stellar-cyclone-bizarre-secrets.html
10/18/2020 6:00 PMTelescopes have captured the rare light flash from a dying star as it was ripped apart by a supermassive black hole. This rarely seen “tidal disruption event” — which creates spaghettification in stars as they stretch and stretch – is the closest such known event to happen, at only 215 million light-years from Earth.https://www.space.com/black-hole-star-death-spaghettification
10/19/2020 8:00 AMA human research team and a machine learning algorithm have found that we need to rethink much of what we know about iridium oxide.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-human-machine-iridium-oxide.html
10/19/2020 10:00 AMResearchers using Cassini’s RPWS data showed that Saturn has a cold, compact, and dynamic ionosphere with a density that can vary by as much as a factor of 100. Furthermore, the researchers found that Saturn’s enormous and opaque rings cast ionosphere-altering shadows over the planet, and they may even generate “ring rain.”https://astronomy.com/news/2017/12/saturns-ionosphere
10/19/2020 12:00 PMSince the discovery of graphene more than 15 years ago, researchers have been in a global race to unlock its unique properties. Not only is graphene—a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon arranged in a hexagonal lattice—the strongest, thinnest material known to man, it is also an excellent conductor of heat and electricity.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-stacking-graphene-rare-magnetism.html
10/19/2020 2:00 PMIn a recently published study, a team of researchers led by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) at Monash university suggests an innovative method to analyse gravitational waves from neutron star mergers, where two stars are distinguished by type (rather than mass), depending on how fast they’re spinning.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-method-analyse-densest-star-universe.html
10/19/2020 4:00 PMA team of physicists led by Professor Patrick Windpassinger at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has successfully transported light stored in a quantum memory over a distance of 1.2 millimeters. They have demonstrated that the controlled transport process and its dynamics has only little impact on the properties of the stored light. The researchers used ultra-cold rubidium-87 atoms as a storage medium for the light as to achieve a high level of storage efficiency and a long lifetime.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-physicists-successfully.html
10/19/2020 6:00 PMAt present, the formation of galaxies is difficult to understand without the presence of a ubiquitous, but mysterious component, termed dark matter. Astronomers have measure how much dark matter there is around galaxies, and have found that it varies between 10 and 300 times the quantity of visible matter. However, a few years ago, the discovery of a very diffuse object, named Dragonfly 44, changed this view. It was found that this galaxy has 10,000 times more dark matter than the stars. Taken back by this finding, astronomers have made efforts to see whether this object is really anomalous, or whether something went wrong in the analysis of the observations. Now we have the answer.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-puzzle-strange-galaxy-dark.html
10/20/2020 8:00 AMBill Nye has had it with flat-Earthers and other science deniers. While humanity is landing robots on Mars and breaking open the mysteries of the universe, there continues a social trend of “science denialism.” From opposition to handwashing in the 1800s to modern climate deniers, anti-maskers and “flat-Earthers,” or people who believe that planet Earth is actually flat ( it is not), “anti-science” movements aren’t new, but they are a problem facing us all today, according to Nye..https://www.space.com/bill-nye-speaks-out-flat-earthers-science-denial
10/20/2020 10:00 AMCompressing simple molecular solids with hydrogen at extremely high pressures, University of Rochester engineers and physicists have, for the first time, created material that is superconducting at room temperature.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-room-temperature-superconducting-material.html
10/20/2020 12:00 PMResearchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have increased the conductivity of copper wire by about five percent. That may seem like a small amount but it can make a big difference in motor efficiency. Higher conductivity also means that less copper is needed for the same efficiency, which can reduce the weight and volume of various components that are expected to power our future electric vehicles.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-copper-higher-efficiency-electric-motors.html
10/20/2020 2:00 PMThere is an old saying, “If rubber is the material that opened the way to the ground, aluminum is the one that opened the way to the sky.” New materials were always discovered at each turning point that changed human history. Materials used in memory devices are also drastically evolving with the emergence of new materials such as doped silicon materials, resistance changing materials, and materials that spontaneously magnetize and polarize. How are these new materials made? A research team from POSTECH has revealed the mechanism behind making materials used in new memory devices by using artificial intelligence.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-materials-ai.html
10/20/2020 4:00 PMOnce a black hole forms, its intense gravitational field produces a surface beyond which even light cannot escape, and it appears black to outsiders. All the details of the complex mix of matter and energy in its past are lost, leaving it so simple that it can be completely described by just three parameters: mass, spin, and electric charge. Astronomers can measure the masses of black holes in a relatively straightforward way by watching how matter moves in their vicinity (including other black holes) under the influence of their gravitational fields.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-supermassive-black-hole-milky.html
10/20/2020 6:00 PMThe dominant thinking in evolution focuses on inheritance between parent and offspring – or ‘vertical gene transfer (VGT)’. But now scientists are paying more attention to ‘horizontal gene transfer (HGT)’: the transmission of DNA other than from parent to offspring, as this transfer can tell us about the evolution of a number of other organisms such as bacteria. It can also help us to better understand antibiotic resistance.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-world-microorganisms-evolution.html
10/21/2020 8:00 AMSpaceX will partner with NASA’s Glenn Research Center and Marshall Space Flight Center to demonstrate propellant transfer between tanks on a Starship.http://videos.space.com/m/LOsBvuPR/nasa-chooses-spacex-starship-for-propellant-transfer-demonstration
10/21/2020 10:00 AMScientists in Australia have stumbled across an unusual way to observe color that had previously gone unnoticed. To create the effect, researchers attached a very thin film of one material to another, larger sample. The electric field (an invisible force created by the attraction and repulsion of electrical charges) is very strong where the two materials are connected.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-dont-hidden-colours-coincidence.html
10/21/2020 12:00 PMOver the past few years, a growing number of researchers worldwide has been conducting studies investigating the properties and features of so-called twisted van der Waals (vdW) materials. This unique class of materials could be an ideal platform to examine correlated phases that occur as a result of strong interactions between electrons.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-spontaneous-symmetry-bilayer-graphene.html
10/21/2020 2:00 PMUsing a brain-inspired approach, scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed a way for robots to have the artificial intelligence (AI) to recognize pain and to self-repair when damaged.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-10-scientists-mini-brains-robots-pain-self-repair.html
10/21/2020 4:00 PMFor a tiny embryo to develop into an adult organism, its cells must develop in precise patterns and interact with their neighbors in carefully orchestrated ways. To create complex tissues and organs—from the pattern of rods and cones in the retina to the Byzantine filtration systems of the kidney—all these developing cells must constantly answer a fundamental but surprisingly difficult question: Where am I?https://phys.org/news/2020-10-developmental-illuminate-regenerative-medicine.html
10/21/2020 6:00 PMIn a changing climate, understanding how organisms respond to stress conditions is increasingly important. New work led by Carnegie’s Arthur Grossman and Emanuel Sanz-Luque could enable scientists to engineer the metabolism of organisms to be more resilient and productive in a range of environments.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-phosphate-polymer-cornerstone-metabolic.html
10/22/2020 8:00 AMAt first glance the apparently barren expanses of the Sahel and Sahara deserts feature little greenery, but detailed satellite imagery combined with computer deep learning has revealed a different picture. In fact, some 1.8 billion trees dot parts of the West African Sahara and Sahel deserts and so-called sub-humid zone, a previously uncounted bounty that overturns previous assumptions about such habitats, researchers say.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-barren-millions-trees-dot.html
10/22/2020 10:00 AMFor more than a decade, the American public has been fascinated with string theory. Science popularizers like Brian Greene produced hit TV documentaries that examined this mathematical construct. Could string theory unite physics into one grand unified theory? Perhaps, but with strange implications like extra dimensions and, possibly, even a multiverse.https://astronomy.com/magazine/2015/07/web-extra-what-happens-if-string-theory-is-wrong
10/22/2020 12:00 PMAnyone who has ever experienced “butterflies in the stomach” before giving a big presentation won’t be surprised to learn there is an actual physical connection between their gut and their brain. Neuroscientists and medical professionals call this the “gut-brain-axis” (GBA). A better understanding of the GBA could lead to treatments and cures for neurological mood disorders like depression and anxiety, as well as for a range of chronic auto-immune inflammatory diseases like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA).https://phys.org/news/2020-10-symptoms-heador-gut.html
10/22/2020 2:00 PMCommercial space is about to become more accessible than ever before. On October 15th, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) announced that it has published a new launch and re-entry rule known as the Streamlined Launch and Re-entry Licensing Regulation-2 (SLR2). The new rule aims to increase launch and reentry access for commercial space companies while maintaining safety.https://www.space.com/faa-streamlines-commercial-space-launches-landing-regulations
10/22/2020 4:00 PMGauging whether or not we dwell inside someone else’s computer may come down to advanced AI research—or measurements at the frontiers of cosmology.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-in-a-simulation-chances-are-about-50-50/
10/22/2020 6:00 PMWhile NASA set their sights on the Moon and outer planets, the Soviets spent some 30 years investigating the hellish inner planet Venus.https://astronomy.com/news/2020/08/interplanetary-probes-from-behind-the-iron-curtain-the-soviet-venera-program
10/23/2020 8:00 AMThe serendipitous discovery may just be the best evidence yet of a meteorite causing the mysterious, 1,000-year period known as Younger Dryas.https://astronomy.com/news/2018/11/massive-impact-crater-beneath-greenland-could-explain-ice-age-climate-swing
10/23/2020 10:00 AMAn international group of astronomers, led by Martin Schlecker of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, has found that the arrangement of rocky, gaseous and icy planets in planetary systems is apparently not random and depends on only a few initial conditions. The study is based on a new simulation that tracks the evolution of planetary systems over several billion years. Planetary systems around sun-like stars, which produce in their inner regions super-Earths with low water and gas content, very often form a planet comparable to our Jupiter on an outer orbit. Such planets help to keep potentially dangerous objects away from the inner regions.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-simulations-reveal-rocky-super-earths-thin.html
10/23/2020 12:00 PMFour-and-a-half billion years ago, Earth’s surface was a menacing, hot mess. Long before the emergence of life, temperatures were scorching, and the air was toxic. Plus, as a mere toddler, the Sun bombarded our planet with violent outbursts of radiation called flares and coronal mass ejections. Streams of charged particles called the solar wind threatened our atmosphere. Our planet was, in short, uninhabitable.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/earth-and-moon-once-shared-a-magnetic-shield-protecting-their-atmospheres
10/23/2020 2:00 PMMammals and birds today are warm-blooded, and this is often taken as the reason for their great success.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-world-greatest-mass-extinction-triggered.html
10/23/2020 4:00 PMIt’s widely known that thick, viscous liquids—like honey—flow more slowly than low-viscosity liquids, like water. Researchers were surprised to find this behavior flipped on its head when the liquids flow through chemically coated capillaries. In fact, through these specially coated tubes, liquids a thousand times more viscous flow ten times faster.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-specially-coated-tubes-viscous-liquid.html
10/23/2020 6:00 PMThe eventual creation of replacement biological parts requires fully three-dimensional capabilities that two-dimensional and three-dimensional thin-film bioprinting cannot supply. Now, using a yield stress gel, Penn State engineers can place tiny aggregates of cells exactly where they want to build the complex shapes that will be necessary to replace bone, cartilage and other tissues.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-gel-instrumental-d-bioprinting-biological.html
10/24/2020 8:00 AMIt may be another 100,000 years until the giant red star Betelgeuse dies in a fiery explosion, according to a new study by an international team of researchers.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-supergiant-star-betelgeuse-smaller-closer.html
10/24/2020 10:00 AMChang’e-4 communicates with Earth via a relay satellite named Queqiao, whose orbit around the Earth-Moon L2 point allows it to speak with both the lander and mission scientists back on Earth.https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2020/09/how-do-spacecraft-communicate-from-the-farside-of-the-moon
10/24/2020 12:00 PMA pioneering technique that captures precisely how mountains bend to the will of raindrops has helped to solve a long-standing scientific enigma.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-groundbreaking-discovery-mountains.html
10/24/2020 2:00 PMA new system developed by chemical engineers at MIT could provide a way of continuously removing carbon dioxide from a stream of waste gases, or even from the air. The key component is an electrochemically assisted membrane whose permeability to gas can be switched on and off at will, using no moving parts and relatively little energy.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-membrane-carbon-dioxide-exhaust-streams.html
10/24/2020 4:00 PMA team of scientists took the same spinach you can buy at the grocery store, added a pinch of salt, and turned it into the catalyst for a clean, efficient fuel cell.https://futurism.com/the-byte/fuel-cell-spinach
10/24/2020 6:00 PMResearchers at Tufts University have found that those distinctly funky smells from cheese are one way that fungi communicate with bacteria, and what they are saying has a lot to do with the delicious variety of flavors that cheese has to offer. The research team found that common bacteria essential to ripening cheese can sense and respond to compounds produced by fungi in the rind and released into the air, enhancing the growth of some species of bacteria over others. The composition of bacteria, yeast and fungi that make up the cheese microbiome is critical to flavor and quality of the cheese, so figuring out how that can be controlled or modified adds science to the art of cheese making.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-funky-cheese-microbes.html
10/25/2020 8:00 AMAccording to current estimates, the amount of data produced by humans and machines is rising at an exponential rate, with the digital universe doubling in size every two years. Very likely, the magnetic and optical data-storage systems at our disposal won’t be able to archive this fast-growing volume of digital 1s and 0s anymore at some point. Plus, they cannot safely store data for more than a century without degrading.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-enzymatic-dna-synthesis.html
10/25/2020 10:00 AMThe star responsible for Supernova 1987A ejected more material in some directions than others. This artist’s impression shows how the supernova remnant might look from a different viewpoint than we have on Earth. Rings of material are now lighting up as shock waves from the supernova pass through them.https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2020/08/why-does-supernova-1987a-look-like-a-ring
10/25/2020 12:00 PMThe Southern Ocean played a critical role in the rapid atmospheric carbon dioxide increase during the last deglaciation that took place 20,000 to 10,000 years ago, according to a new report by Boston College geochemist Xingchen (Tony) Wang and an international team.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-deep-sea-corals-reveal-secrets-rapid.html
10/25/2020 2:00 PMhttps://astronomy.com/news/2019/06/what-did-the-apollo-astronauts-leave-behind
10/25/2020 4:00 PMFluid around the brain redistributes in the skull during spaceflight, scientists found in a new study of 11 cosmonauts who visited the International Space Station (ISS). The study, which confirms previous findings about the effects of microgravity on the human brain, was led by Steven Jillings, a doctoral student at the Lab for Equilibrium Investigations and Aerospace (LEIA) at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. Previously, Jillings co-authored two studies that examined the effect of spaceflight on the brains of Russian cosmonauts, and recently Jillings took the analytical helm to further explore the topic.https://www.space.com/astronaut-brains-craniospinal-fluid-behavior-in-space
10/25/2020 6:00 PMIn his quest to bring ever-faster cameras to the world, Caltech’s Lihong Wang has developed technology that can reach blistering speeds of 70 trillion frames per second, fast enough to see light travel. Just like the camera in your cell phone, though, it can only produce flat images.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-ultrafast-camera-d-movies-billion.html
10/26/2020 8:00 AMGot any spaces left on that 2020 bingo card? Pencil in “another Dust Bowl in the Great Plains.” A study from University of Utah researchers and their colleagues finds that atmospheric dust levels are rising across the Great Plains at a rate of up to 5% per year.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-atmospheric-great-plains.html
10/26/2020 10:00 AMThe Fourier transform is an important mathematical tool that decomposes a function or dataset into a its constituent frequencies, much like one could decompose a musical chord into a combination of its notes. It is used across all fields of engineering in some form or another and, accordingly, algorithms to compute it efficiently have been developed—that is, at least for conventional computers. But what about quantum computers?https://phys.org/news/2020-10-power-tool-math-quantum.html
10/26/2020 12:00 PMA team of researchers have examined whether urban red maples—a resilient native tree known to thrive in urban environments—acclimate to environmental shifts and whether that response is impacted by the size of the city.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-red-maples-productive-environment-urbanization.html
10/26/2020 2:00 PMThe Gateway program is making progress toward establishing a sustainable lunar presence. Behind the scenes, women like Sharada Vitalpur and Lindsey Ingram are working hard to make the Gateway a reality, while encouraging the next generation of explorers to pursue their passion and achieve success.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/faces-behind-nasas-artemis-gateway-sharada-vitalpur-and-lindsey-ingram
10/26/2020 4:00 PMA world-first study by Monash University engineers has demonstrated improvements in the fatigue life of high strength aluminium alloys by 25 times—a significant outcome for the transport manufacturing industry.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-monash-fatigue-life-high-strength.html
10/26/2020 6:00 PMAn international team of astronomers has managed to capture some extraordinarily rare images of planetary systems being born, hundreds of light-years away. While we’ve seen images of “protoplanetary disks” before, we’ve never seen the process captured in such detail.https://futurism.com/images-show-planets-form
10/27/2020 8:00 AMAlong with the wooly mammoth and the giant ground sloth, the saber-toothed cats were probably among the most famous animals that lived during the Pleistocene Epoch and went extinct before the end of last ice age. Over the years, saber-toothed cats have also been the subject of many research projects.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-deadly-long-distance-hunter-dna-reveals.html
10/27/2020 10:00 AMReinfection, in which an individual is subject to multiple, distinct infections from the same virus species throughout their lifetime, is a salient feature of many respiratory viruses. Indeed, the persistence and ubiquity in human society of common respiratory viruses—including influenza viruses, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), rhinovirus, and the endemic coronaviruses—are largely due to their ability to produce repeat infection. Since the emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus responsible for the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, a critical concern has been whether humans will experience reinfections with this pathogen, which might enable it to become endemic.https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/10/13/science.abe5960
10/27/2020 12:00 PMOnce a black hole forms, its intense gravitational field produces a surface beyond which even light cannot escape, and it appears black to outsiders. All the details of the complex mix of matter and energy in its past are lost, leaving it so simple that it can be completely described by just three parameters: mass, spin, and electric charge. Astronomers can measure the masses of black holes in a relatively straightforward way by watching how matter moves in their vicinity (including other black holes) under the influence of their gravitational fields.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-supermassive-black-hole-milky.html
10/27/2020 2:00 PMKicking off the one-year countdown to the launch of NASA’s Lucy mission, middle and high school students in U.S. public, private and home schools can enter the Lucy in Space contest starting today. Public health conditions permitting, first place winners will receive invitations to see the spacecraft launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Lucy’s launch window is open from October 16 to November 5, 2021.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-invites-students-to-join-lucy-mission-in-space-contest/
10/27/2020 4:00 PMThe Nazca lines, a Unesco World Heritage site, is home to designs on the ground – known as geoglyphs – created some 2,000 years ago. Scientists believe the cat, as with other Nazca animal figures, was created by making depressions in the desert floor, leaving coloured earth exposed.https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-54593295
10/27/2020 6:00 PMSome supermassive black holes launch powerful beams of material, or jets, away from them, while others do not. Astronomers may now have identified why. Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, ESA’s XMM-Newton, Germany’s ROentgen SATellite (ROSAT), the NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and other telescopes, researchers have studied more than 700 quasars – rapidly growing supermassive black holes – to isolate the factors that determine why these black holes launch jets.https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/images/the-recipe-for-powerful-quasar-jets.html
10/28/2020 8:00 AMRecently, a research group led by Prof. Zhang Yongsheng from the Institute of Solid State Physics, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science successfully explained the novel physical mechanisms behind pyrite-type ZnSe2.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-scientists-mechanisms-thermoelectric-material.html
10/28/2020 10:00 AMThe Columbia River is home to one of the West Coast’s most important Chinook salmon runs. Through late spring and early summer, mature fish return from the sea and begin their arduous journey upriver to spawn. In recent years, these fish have faced an additional challenge: hungry California sea lions.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-early-arriving-endangered-chinook-salmon-brunt.html
10/28/2020 12:00 PMScientists are doubling down on a peculiar model that attempts to quantify and measure consciousness.https://futurism.com/the-byte/mathematicians-think-universe-conscious
10/28/2020 2:00 PMIf you’ve seen a worrying headline about an asteroid passing too close for comfort on Nov. 2, the day before the U.S. heads to the poll fir the 2020 presidential election, NASA wants you to take a deep breath and relax. There is indeed a space rock, called 2018 VP1, that will make a close approach to Earth on that date — but it isn’t any threat to humans, according to the NASA office tasked with monitoring such threats.https://www.space.com/election-day-asteroid-flybys-2020.html
10/28/2020 4:00 PMHow long until we find evidence of life beyond Earth? If a panel of experts is on track with their estimates, it may be sooner than you think. That’s according to presenters at the International Astronautical Congress taking place here this week. During a discussion Tuesday Oct. 22), half a dozen people who spend their time focused on questions related to the search for life beyond Earth each offered their educated guesses — and their whimsical wishes — for when humanity might first gather conclusive evidence for extraterrestrial life.https://www.space.com/how-long-to-find-alien-life-iac2019.html
10/28/2020 6:00 PMLeiden chemists Marc Koper and Ian McCrum have discovered that the degree to which a metal binds to the oxygen atom of water is decisive for how well the chemical conversion of water to molecular hydrogen takes place. This insight helps to develop better catalysts for the production of sustainable hydrogen, an important raw material for the chemical industry and the fuel needed for environmentally friendly hydrogen cars.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-insight-sustainable-hydrogen-closer.html
10/29/2020 8:00 AMA team of scientists is furiously working away at a spacecraft thruster that they say could reach Saturn’s moon Titan in less than half the time it took the satellite Cassini.https://futurism.com/the-byte/fusion-drive-spacecraft-exploring-solar-system-figure-them-out
10/29/2020 10:00 AMWe could end up getting an amazing ground-level view of the first crewed moon landing since 1972. NASA’s Flight Opportunities program has just awarded a $650,000 grant to the team behind Lunar ExoCam, an imaging system designed to eject from moon landers during descent and record video of their touchdowns from the otherworldly gray ground.https://www.space.com/lunar-exocam-landing-video-moon-surface
10/29/2020 12:00 PMU.S. and Italian engineers have demonstrated the first nanophotonic platform capable of manipulating polarized light 1 trillion times per second.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-trillion-nets-terahertz-polarized-bytes.html
10/29/2020 2:00 PMUltrathin materials such as graphene promise a revolution in nanoscience and technology. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have published a study in Nature Communications in which they present a method for controlling the edges of two-dimensional materials using a “magic” chemical.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-edges-d-materials.html
10/29/2020 4:00 PMAnts are one of the most successful groups of animals on the planet, occupying anywhere from temperate soil to tropical rainforests, desert dunes and kitchen counters. They’re social insects and their team-working abilities have long since been identified as one of the key factors leading to their success. Ants are famously able to lift or drag objects many times their own weight and transport these objects back to their colony. But with previous research having focused on the social aspects of an ant colony, looking at an individual ant has been somewhat neglected.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-flight-huge-benefits-ants.html
10/29/2020 6:00 PMIf you want to see science fiction at work, visit a modern machine shop, where 3D printers create materials in just about any shape you can imagine. NASA is exploring the technique – known as additive manufacturing when used by specialized engineers – to build rocket engines as well as potential outposts on the Moon and Mars. Nearer in the future is a different milestone: NASA’s Perseverance rover, which lands on the Red Planet on Feb. 18, 2021, carries 11 metal parts made with 3D printing.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasas-perseverance-rover-bringing-3d-printed-metal-parts-to-mars
10/30/2020 8:00 AMA group of University of Chicago scientists announced a groundbreaking study that explores the role of a small molecule, called IP6, in building the HIV-1 virus capsid.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-small-molecule-key-hiv-capsules.html
10/30/2020 10:00 AMUsing luminescence dating of ancient river sediments, a new study published in Quaternary Science Reviews presents evidence for river activity at Nal Quarry in the central Thar Desert starting from approx. 173 thousand years ago. These findings represent the oldest directly dated phase of river activity in the region and indicate Stone Age populations lived in a distinctly different Thar Desert landscape than we encounter today.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-oldest-dated-evidence-river-thar.html
10/30/2020 12:00 PMResearchers dissolved a sugary treat underwater to understand the origin of spiky rock forests.https://www.scientificamerican.com/gallery/melting-candy-gives-mathematicians-insight-into-how-some-landscapes-form/
10/30/2020 2:00 PMAstronomers have conducted a study of stellar population and kinematics of globular clusters (GCs) in the galaxy Messier 85, and found that this galaxy hosts a peculiar globular cluster system. The finding is reported in a paper published October 6 on the arXiv pre-print repository.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-messier-peculiar-globular-cluster.html
10/30/2020 4:00 PMAbout 40% of the U.S. population lives in a coastal area and in Hawai’i, nearly everyone is vulnerable to the effects of tropical storms and hurricanes.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-tropical-cyclones-faster-decades.html
10/30/2020 6:00 PMLife on Earth has a long, but also an extremely turbulent history. On more than one occasion, the majority of all species became extinct and an already highly developed biodiversity shrank to a minimum again, changing the course of evolution each time. The most extensive mass extinction took place about 252 million years ago. It marked the end of the Permian Epoch and the beginning of the Triassic Epoch. About three quarters of all land life and about 95 percent of life in the ocean disappeared within only a few thousand years.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-driver-largest-mass-extinction-history.html
10/31/2020 8:00 AMNew computer simulations model an alternate way of thinking about the cosmos: as a cyclic universe that has no beginning or end.https://www.wired.com/story/what-if-the-big-bang-was-actually-a-big-bounce/
10/31/2020 10:00 AMThe waters of the Gulf of Maine are warming faster than oceans almost anywhere on Earth. And as the level of carbon dioxide rises in the atmosphere, it’s absorbed by the oceans, causing pH levels to fall. Ocean acidification makes it difficult for shellfish to thicken their shells—their primary defense against predators.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-declines-shellfish-species-rocky-seashores.html
10/31/2020 12:00 PMThe diminutive world and others like it could help astronomers probe the mysteries of planet formation.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rogue-rocky-planet-found-adrift-in-the-milky-way/
10/31/2020 2:00 PMA team of scientists is furiously working away at a spacecraft thruster that they say could reach Saturn’s moon Titan in less than half the time it took the satellite Cassini.https://futurism.com/the-byte/fusion-drive-spacecraft-exploring-solar-system-figure-them-out
10/31/2020 4:00 PMMeasurements of stars orbiting our galaxy’s core suggest our 4-million-solar-mass black hole, Sagittarius A*, may have another supermassive companion lurking nearby.https://astronomy.com/news/2019/12/the-milky-way-may-have-two-supermassive-black-holes
10/31/2020 6:00 PMYou may think we’ve learned everything there is to know about human spit, but it turns out the well has not gone dry. Scientists may have identified a previously undiscovered pair of salivary glands near the center of our heads.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/you-may-have-new-organ-lurking-middle-your-head
11/1/2020 8:00 AMA new international study led by Monash University climate scientists has revealed that ice loss in Antarctica persisted for many centuries after it was initiated and is expected to continue.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-ice-loss-antarctica.html
11/1/2020 10:00 AMT10
11/1/2020 12:00 PMAs humanity ramps up its search for alien life, we should keep in mind that E.T. might be hunting for us as well. A new study makes that point by identifying more than 1,000 nearby stars that are favorably positioned for spotting life on Earth.https://www.space.com/exoplanets-transiting-earth-life-detection-possible
11/1/2020 2:00 PMWhat do Albert Einstein, the Global Positioning System (GPS), and a pair of stars 200,000 trillion miles from Earth have in common? The answer is an effect from Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity called the “gravitational redshift,” where light is shifted to redder colors because of gravity.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-einstein-theory-relativity-critical-gps.html
11/1/2020 4:00 PMThree decades after Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan suggested that Voyager 1 snap Earth’s picture from billions of miles away—resulting in the iconic Pale Blue Dot photograph—two astronomers now offer another unique cosmic perspective: some exoplanets—planets from beyond our own solar system—have a direct line of sight to observe Earth’s biological qualities from far, far away.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-exoplanets.html
11/1/2020 6:00 PMAn international team of astrophysicists under Dutch leadership has demonstrated with an improved model that colliding neutron stars can emit gamma rays. Old models did not predict this and faltered since the merging of two neutron stars in 2017 that released gamma rays.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-gamma-rays-gold-merging-neutron.html
11/2/2020 8:00 AMIf you want to map the tiniest parts of a protein, you only have a few options: You can coax millions of individual protein molecules to align into crystals and analyze them using x-ray crystallography. Or you can flash-freeze copies of the protein and bombard them with electrons, a lower resolution method called cryo–electron microscopy (cryo-EM). Now, for the first time, scientists have sharpened cryo-EM’s resolution to the atomic level, allowing them to pinpoint the positions of individual atoms in a variety of proteins at a resolution that rivals x-ray crystallography’s.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/cryo-electron-microscopy-breaks-atomic-resolution-barrier-last
11/2/2020 10:00 AMT10
11/2/2020 12:00 PMPioneering research, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, into ancient tides during the Late Silurian—Devonian periods (420 million years ago—380 million years ago), suggests that large tides may have been a key environmental factor in the evolution of bony fish and early tetrapods, the first vertebrate land-dwellers.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-large-tides-key-factor-evolution.html
11/2/2020 2:00 PMWe all love gold, and through the millennia we’ve scoured the face of our planet for that precious yellowish metal. Sometimes prospectors find nothing more than a few golden bits in a stream. Sometimes they hit paydirt–a massive vein making for easy pickings.https://www.discovery.com/space/there-s-gold-in-them-thar—-asteroids-
11/2/2020 4:00 PMResearchers have created an AI that draws what a person in looking at in real time just by reading and decoding their brain waves. Perhaps most impressive of all, the technique is noninvasive, with all the brainwave information gathered through a cyberpunk-looking, electrode-covered electroencephalography (EEG) headset.https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-draws-decodes-brainwaves
11/2/2020 6:00 PMTardigrades, small aquatic creatures known as water bears, can survive extreme heat, radiation, and even the vacuum of outer space—conditions that would kill most animals. Now, scientists have discovered a new species of tardigrade that can endure ultraviolet (UV) light so lethal, it is regularly used to get rid of hard-to-kill viruses and bacteria.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/new-species-water-bear-uses-fluorescent-shield-survive-lethal-uv-radiation
11/3/2020 8:00 AMArchaeologists and architects alike have long wondered why 15th century Incans built the grand citadel of Machu Picchu where they did, high in the remote Andes atop a narrow ridge in what is now Peru. One simple answer, researchers now suggest, is that that’s where building materials for the site—large amounts of already fractured rock—were readily available.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/machu-picchu-was-built-over-major-fault-zones-now-researchers-think-they-know-why
11/3/2020 10:00 AMT10
11/3/2020 12:00 PMScientists may have observed the Higgs boson doing a new trick: creating pairs of muons.https://www.space.com/lhc-higgs-boson-decay-muon-pairs.html
11/3/2020 2:00 PMNASA has finally released footage from a truly epic moment: the agency’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft touching down on asteroid Bennu’s surface to scoop up a bunch of space rocks.https://futurism.com/the-byte/watch-nasa-spacecraft-touch-down-asteroid
11/3/2020 4:00 PMEmissions from coal-fired power plants in China are fertilizing the North Pacific Ocean with a metal nutrient important for marine life, according to new findings from a USC-led research team.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-metal-deposits-chinese-coal-pacific.html
11/3/2020 6:00 PMBlack holes are powerful engines of pure gravity, capable of pulling on objects so intensely that they can’t possibly escape. When those objects near the event horizon, they’re accelerated to incredible velocities. Now, some physicists are suggesting harnessing the gravitational pull of black holes to create ferocious particle accelerators. The trick, the new study finds, is to carefully set everything up so that particles don’t get lost forever in the insatiable black hole. This new insight may help us identify black holes from the streams of particles blasting away from them.https://www.space.com/black-holes-transformed-into-particle-accelerators
11/4/2020 8:00 AMConservation scientist Kim Williams-Guillén was wracking her brain to come up with a way to save endangered sea turtles from egg poachers when she had an “aha” moment: If she placed a fake egg containing a GPS tracker in the reptiles’ nests, she might be able to track the thieves.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/endangered-baby-sea-turtles-may-have-new-savior-gps-eggs
11/4/2020 10:00 AMT10
11/4/2020 12:00 PMSeattle-based Ultra Safe Nuclear Technologies (USNC-Tech) has developed a concept for a new Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) engine and delivered it to NASA. Claimed to be safer and more reliable than previous NTP designs and with far greater efficiency than a chemical rocket, the concept could help realize the goal of using nuclear propulsion to revolutionize deep space travel, reducing Earth-Mars travel time to just three months.https://newatlas.com/space/nuclear-thermal-propulsion-ntp-nasa-unsc-tech-deep-space-travel/
11/4/2020 2:00 PMThere’s a mysterious object in space heading our way — and while it poses no threat to the Earth, it will probably get trapped in our orbit and become a new minimoon.https://futurism.com/the-byte/earth-capturing-tiny-new-moon
11/4/2020 4:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/nakul.munim/videos/10158734149677139
11/4/2020 6:00 PMSulfur dioxide plumes emanating from volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io have been observed for the first time. The plumes are shown in yellow in this composite of radio (ALMA) and optical light (Voyager 1 and Galileo missions) imagery. Io is eclipsed by Jupiter in the imagery.http://videos.space.com/m/ojl0bWLx/sulfur-dioxide-plumes-detected-on-jupiters-moon-io
11/5/2020 8:00 AMNASA may have gotten a little overzealous with its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, allowing it to bite off more asteroid than it can chew. In a triumphant first for the space agency, its spacecraft touched down on Bennu, a small near-Earth asteroid some 500 meters across, to scoop up a sample to bring back home. At first, everything seemed to have gone according to plan. But only three days later, scientists made an unfortunate discovery: OSIRIS-REx scooped up so many space rocks that its “mouth” was jammed open, with bits of asteroid rubble tumbling out into space.https://futurism.com/nasa-spacecraft-grabbed-too-many-asteroid-chunks-drifting-into-space
11/5/2020 10:00 AMT10
11/5/2020 12:00 PMPlant biology researchers at the University of Illinois and computer scientists at the University of California Irvine have developed a new method of fossil pollen identification through the combination of super-resolution microscopy and machine learning. The team, led by Dr. Surangi Punyasena and Ms. Ingrid Romero (associate professor and graduate student in Plant Biology, respectively), developed and trained three convolutional neural network models to identify fossil pollen specimens from an unknown group of legumes.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-super-resolution-microscopy-machine-fossil-pollen.html
11/5/2020 2:00 PMThanks to a series of recent discoveries, a team of scientists says it found what could be the most Earth-like, potentially habitable exoplanet to date. The world, TOI-700 d, is close to the same size and mass as Earth and, in a first-of-its-kind discovery, orbits within its host star’s habitable zone as well.https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-find-earth-sized-exoplanet-habitable-zone
11/5/2020 4:00 PMResearchers have developed a powerful, low-cost method for recycling used cooking oil and agricultural waste into biodiesel, and turning food scraps and plastic rubbish into high-value products.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-biodiesel-dirty-cooking-oil-easier.html
11/5/2020 6:00 PMScientists have used genome sequencing to reveal the extent to which a drug-resistant gastrointestinal bacterium can spread within a hospital, highlighting the challenge hospitals face in controlling infections.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-drug-resistant-hospital-bacteria-persist-deep.html
11/6/2020 8:00 AMOur sun’s death is a long way off — about 4.5 billion years, give or take — but someday it’s going to happen, and what then for our solar system? The trouble begins before the death proper: The first thing we have to contend with is the elderly sun itself. As the fusion of hydrogen continues inside the sun, the result of that reaction — helium — builds up in the core.https://www.space.com/solar-system-fate-when-sun-dies
11/6/2020 10:00 AMT10
11/6/2020 12:00 PMBats act as reservoirs of numerous zoonotic viruses, including SARS-CoV, MERS CoV, Ebola virus and—most likely—SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen behind the ongoing pandemic. However, the molecular mechanisms bats deploy to tolerate pathogenic viruses has remained unclear.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-uncovers-excel-viral-reservoirs-sick.html
11/6/2020 2:00 PMFinding Planet Nine may require looking at telescope images in a different light. Astronomers are vetting a “shifting and stacking” technique that could aid the hunt for the putative world, which some researchers think lurks undiscovered in the far outer system, way beyond Pluto’s orbit.https://www.space.com/planet-nine-search-observing-technique
11/6/2020 4:00 PMNew results from NASA’s Juno mission at Jupiter suggest that either “sprites” or “elves” could be dancing in the upper atmosphere of the solar system’s largest planet. It is the first time these bright, unpredictable and extremely brief flashes of light—formally known as transient luminous events, or TLE’s—have been observed on another world.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-juno-sprites-elves-frolic-jupiter.html
11/6/2020 6:00 PMDivers in northwest Florida had a rare underwater encounter on Sunday, and they captured it on video. Two whale sharks and a large manta ray were spotted swimming around the sunken Thomas Heyward liberty ship, about eight miles southwest of Destin.https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/10/26/whale-sharks-and-manta-ray-spotted-destin-florida/6048858002/
11/7/2020 8:00 AMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=saved&v=352993349263345
11/7/2020 10:00 AMT10
11/7/2020 12:00 PMCrews working on the largest U.S. experiment designed to directly detect dark matter completed a major milestone last month, and are now turning their sights toward startup after experiencing some delays due to global pandemic precautions.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-major-milestone-underground-dark.html
11/7/2020 2:00 PMIt’s a perennial sci-fi favorite: other worlds, other universes, other possibilities, right beyond the bounds of the known cosmos or just a flick of a magic device away. Maybe the other worlds are eerily similar to own except for some quirky little change in history. Maybe they’re radically different, with new and weird and wonderful kinds of life. Maybe they’re so different that the basic rules of physics don’t even apply there.https://www.space.com/inflating-universe-could-create-multiverse.html
11/7/2020 4:00 PMThe loss of huge ice masses can contribute to the warming that is causing this loss and further risks. A new study now quantifies this feedback by exploring long-term if-then scenarios. If the Arctic summer sea ice were to melt completely, a scenario that is likely to become reality at least temporarily within this century, this could eventually add roughly 0.2 degrees C to global warming. It is, however, not in addition to IPCC projections of future warming, since these already take the relevant mechanisms into account. Still, the scientists have now separated the effects of the ice loss from other effects and quantified it.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-ice-loss-due-vicious-circle.html
11/7/2020 6:00 PMAn international team of astronomers has identified one of the rarest known classes of gamma-ray emitting galaxies, called BL Lacertae, within the first 2 billion years of the age of the Universe. The team, that has used one of the largest optical telescope in the world, Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), located at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos (Garafía, La Palma), consists of researchers from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM, Spain), DESY (Germany), University of California Riverside and Clemson University (USA).https://phys.org/news/2020-10-grantecan-farthest-black-hole-rare.html
11/8/2020 8:00 AMLiving organisms aren’t the only things that evolve over time. Cultural practices change, too, and in recent years social scientists have taken a keen interest in understanding this cultural evolution. Much research has focused on psychological factors among individuals, like how our visual system constrains the shape of written characters.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-rhythm-drum-beat-reveals-cultural-evolution.html
11/8/2020 10:00 AMT10
11/8/2020 12:00 PMNASA’s moon-orbiting space station just got a new high-profile partner. The European Space Agency (ESA) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Tuesday (Oct. 27) formalizing its collaboration on Gateway, a planned outpost in lunar orbit that NASA sees as key to its Artemis program of crewed moon exploration.https://www.space.com/europe-help-build-gateway-moon-space-station
11/8/2020 2:00 PMBy analyzing duplicates of thousands of genes, researchers have reconstructed the evolutionary events leading to the creation of eukaryotic cells, the precursors to virtually all life you can see with the naked eye. The evolutionary timeline from simple bacterial cells to complex eukaryotic cells progressed differently than previously thought.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-timeline-early-eukaryotic-evolution-unveiled.html
11/8/2020 4:00 PMA trio of researchers with Washington University St. Louis, the Columbia River Inter-tribal Fish Commission and San Francisco State University has found that invading mole rats at times kidnap pups from the colonies they conquer. In their paper published in the Journal of Zoology, Stan Braude, Jon Hess and C. Ingram describe their decade-long study of mole rats in Kenya’s Meru National Park and what they learned about their efforts to expand colony size. He’s got a great face for radio.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-invading-mole-rats-kidnap-pups.html
11/8/2020 6:00 PMNASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission has logged a lot of flight miles since being lofted skyward on July 30—146.3 million miles (235.4 million kilometers) to be exact. Turns out that is exactly the same distance it has to go before the spacecraft hits the Red Planet’s atmosphere like a 11,900 mph (19,000 kph) freight train on Feb. 18, 2021.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-nasa-perseverance-rover-midway-mars.html
11/9/2020 8:00 AMScientists have discovered a massive detached coral reef in the Great Barrier Reef–the first to be discovered in over 120 years, Schmidt Ocean Institute announced today. Measuring more than 500m high–taller than the Empire State Building, the Sydney Tower and the Petronas Twin Towers–the reef was discovered by Australian scientists aboard Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor, currently on a 12-month exploration of the ocean surrounding Australia.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-scientists-meter-tall-coral-reef-great.html
11/9/2020 10:00 AMT10
11/9/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=saved&v=3204729772969965
11/9/2020 2:00 PMA team of researchers affiliated with a host of institutions in China has developed a new class of proton-exchange membranes (PEMs) assembled from transition-metal phosphorus trichalcogenide nanosheets. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes using metal vacancies to improve conductivity in the PEMs. Fengmei Wang and Jun He with the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Beijing have published a Perspective piece in the same journal issue outlining the history of proton exchange membrane research and the work done by the team in this new effort.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-proton-membranes-d-layered-phosphorus.html
11/9/2020 4:00 PMCentaurs are minor planets believed to have originated in the Kuiper Belt in the outer solar system. They sometimes have comet-like features such as tails and comae—clouds of dust particles and gas—even though they orbit in a region between Jupiter and Neptune where it is too cold for water to readily sublimate, or transition, directly from a solid to a gas.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-astronomers-distant-planetary.html
11/9/2020 6:00 PMCoronaviruses are adept at imitating human immune proteins that have been implicated in severe COVID-19 disease, a study from researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons has found.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-coronaviruses-masters-mimicry.html
11/10/2020 8:00 AMA type of wrinkled ‘super pea’ may help control blood sugar levels and could reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, suggests a new study. The research, from scientists at Imperial College London, the John Innes Centre, Quadram Institute Bioscience and University of Glasgow, suggests incorporating the peas into foods, in the form of whole pea seeds or flour, may help tackle the global type 2 diabetes epidemic.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-wrinkled-super-pea-added-foods.html
11/10/2020 10:00 AMT10
11/10/2020 12:00 PMA team of scientists including two physicists at the University of Sussex has found a way to circumvent a 178-year old theory which means they can effectively cancel magnetic fields at a distance. They are the first to be able to do so in a way which has practical benefits.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-physicists-circumvent-centuries-old-theory-cancel.html
11/10/2020 2:00 PMRecently discovered rock art from caves in Northern Spain represents an artistic cultural style common across ancient Europe, but previously unknown from the Iberian Peninsula, according to a study published October 28, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Diego Garate of the Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones Prehistóricas de Cantabria, Spain, and colleagues.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-bison-engravings-spanish-caves-reveal.html
11/10/2020 4:00 PMThe gravitational force in the Universe under which it has evolved from a state almost uniform at the Big Bang until now, when matter is concentrated in galaxies, stars and planets, is provided by what is termed ‘dark matter.” But in spite of the essential role that this extra material plays, we know almost nothing about its nature, behavior and composition, which is one of the basic problems of modern physics. In a recent article in Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters, scientists at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC)/University of La Laguna (ULL) and of the National University of the North-West of the Province of Buenos Aires (Junín, Argentina) have shown that the dark matter in galaxies follows a ‘maximum entropy’ distribution, which sheds light on its nature.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-mystery-dark-galaxies.html
11/10/2020 6:00 PMThere’s an extremely rare metallic asteroid lurking between Mars and Jupiter, and it’s worth more than the entire global economy. Now, the Hubble Space Telescope has given us a closer look at the object, which is worth an estimated $10,000 quadrillion.https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hubble-space-telescope-rare-asteroid-16-psyche-worth-10000-quadrillion/
11/11/2020 8:00 AMIn a first, NASA scientists have spotted a molecule of cyclopropenylidene (C3H2) in the atmosphere of the largest of Saturn’s 62 moons, Titan. Calling this development ‘unexpected’, scientists claim that this is the first time that they have detected this molecule in an atmosphere. They found C3H2 by using a radio telescope observatory in northern Chile known as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Scientists believe that this carbon-based molecule may be a “precursor to more complex compounds that could form or feed possible life on Titan”.https://gadgets.ndtv.com/science/news/nasa-scientists-cyclopropenylidene-c3h2-molecule-moon-titan-atmosphere-saturn-alma-2317114
11/11/2020 10:00 AMThe most common method astronomers use to determine the composition of stars, planets, and other objects is spectroscopy. Today, this process uses instruments with a grating that spreads out the light from an object by wavelength. This spread-out light is called a spectrum. Every element — and combination of elements — has a unique fingerprint that astronomers can look for in the spectrum of a given object. Identifying those fingerprints allows researchers to determine what it is made of.https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2019/06/how-do-scientists-determine-the-chemical-compositions-of-the-planets-and-stars
11/11/2020 12:00 PMWhen people take antibiotics for one infection, another can swoop in to take its place: the bacterium Clostridioides difficile, which causes severe, recurring colon infections that kill nearly 30,000 people annually in the United States, most over the age of 65. Now, researchers have a new idea for battling C. diff – they have modified yeast to produce and deliver antibodies that defang the bacterium’s two toxins and spur recovery in infected mice.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/antibody-producing-yeast-vanquishes-deadly-gut-infection-mice
11/11/2020 2:00 PMScientists can now catch gravitational waves better than ever before.https://www.space.com/ligo-rounds-up-black-hole-mergers
11/11/2020 4:00 PMAt first glance, a pack of wolves has little to do with a vinaigrette. However, a team led by Ramin Golestanian, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, has developed a model that establishes a link between the movement of predators and prey and the segregation of vinegar and oil. They expanded a theoretical framework that until now was only valid for inanimate matter. In addition to predators and prey, other living systems such as enzymes or self-organizing cells can now be described.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-biological.html
11/11/2020 6:00 PMThe Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is at a crossroads. Recent long-term studies of the area indicate that rising temperatures and evaporation rates will likely further deplete scarce water resources critical to meeting the nation’s agricultural, industrial, and domestic needs; more extreme flooding events could endanger lives, economic vitality, and infrastructure; and a combination of increasing heat and humidity levels may ultimately render the kingdom uninhabitable. Facing a foreboding future, how might the nation adapt to changing climatic conditions and become more resilient to climate extremes?https://phys.org/news/2020-10-saudi-arabia-humidity-precipitation-extremes.html
11/12/2020 8:00 AMWhen atoms get extremely close, they develop intriguing interactions that could be harnessed to create new generations of computing and other technologies. These interactions in the realm of quantum physics have proven difficult to study experimentally due the basic limitations of optical microscopes.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-atoms-scientists-closer-quantum-weirdness.html
11/12/2020 10:00 AMPterodactyls and other related winged reptiles that lived alongside the dinosaurs steadily improved their ability to fly to become the deadly masters of the sky over the course of millions of years.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-giant-lizards-learnt-millions-years.html
11/12/2020 12:00 PMPhysicists find hints that entanglement explains Einstein’s equations for gravity.https://astronomy.com/news/2019/05/could-quantum-mechanics-explain-the-existence-of-space-time
11/12/2020 2:00 PMThe Big Bang may have started the universe, but it’s likely that littler bangs played a key role in life on Earth, say Albion College Physics Professor Nicolle Zellner and Chemistry Professor Vanessa McCaffrey. They (along with former student Jayden Butler, ’17) share their fascinating findings on the interspace dispersal of glycolaldehyde (GLA) in an article recently published by the journal Astrobiology.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-comets-impacted-life-earth.html
11/12/2020 4:00 PMA global study of ancient dog DNA, led by scientists at the Francis Crick Institute, University of Oxford, University of Vienna and archaeologists from more than 10 countries, presents evidence that there were different types of dogs more than 11,000 years ago in the period immediately following the Ice Age.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-ancient-dog-dna-canine-diversity.html
11/12/2020 6:00 PMAstronomers have spotted the smallest “rogue planet” candidate yet known, a world possibly smaller than Earth that apparently cruises through our Milky Way galaxy unattached to a star.https://www.space.com/smallest-rogue-planet-discovery
11/13/2020 8:00 AMNewly developed biosensor devices linked to smartphones could help medical practitioners dramatically cut down the real-time detection rates in the battle against COVID-19 and other future viral outbreaks.https://phys.org/news/2020-10-lab-on-a-chip-devices-covid-.html
11/13/2020 10:00 AMIf lightning exists on Mars, it may be less energetic and frequent than lightning on Earth, all because of the Red Planet’s thin air.https://www.space.com/mars-lightning-weak-thin-atmosphere.html
11/13/2020 12:00 PMNeptune, along with its cousin Uranus, is the least-explored planet in our solar system, having been visited by a spacecraft only once. Yet we’ve found more Neptune-sized worlds orbiting other stars than any other type of planet.https://www.planetary.org/worlds/neptune
11/13/2020 2:00 PMSometime toward the end of the last ice age, a gray wolf gingerly approached a human encampment. Those first tentative steps set his species on the path to a dramatic transformation: By at least 15,000 years ago, those wolves had become dogs, and neither they nor their human companions would ever be the same. But just how this relationship evolved over the ensuing millennia has been a mystery. Now, in the most comprehensive comparison yet of ancient dog and human DNA, scientists are starting to fill in some of the blanks, revealing where dogs and humans traveled together—and where they may have parted ways.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/how-dogs-tracked-their-humans-across-ancient-world
11/13/2020 4:00 PMA meteorite that landed on a frozen lake in 2018 contains thousands of organic compounds that formed billions of years ago and could hold clues about the origins of life on Earth.https://www.space.com/fireball-meteorite-organic-compounds
11/13/2020 6:00 PMIf you want to map the tiniest parts of a protein, you only have a few options: You can coax millions of individual protein molecules to align into crystals and analyze them using x-ray crystallography. Or you can flash-freeze copies of the protein and bombard them with electrons, a lower resolution method called cryo–electron microscopy (cryo-EM). Now, for the first time, scientists have sharpened cryo-EM’s resolution to the atomic level, allowing them to pinpoint the positions of individual atoms in a variety of proteins at a resolution that rivals x-ray crystallography’s.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/cryo-electron-microscopy-breaks-atomic-resolution-barrier-last
11/14/2020 8:00 AMCollisions between galaxies can take millions of years. The galaxies NGC 5394 and NGC 5395 are in the middle of one such ambling encounter. The pair, located about 160 million light-years away from Earth, have already collided at least once, astronomers say. The stars in each of the galaxies are so far apart that any collisions between stars are very unlikely. However, the collision may have caused turbulent motions in the galaxies’ gases and triggered new bursts of star formation.https://astronomy.com/news/2019/12/these-two-galaxies-were-caught-mid-collision
11/14/2020 10:00 AMPulsars are the lighthouses of the universe. These tiny, compact objects are neutron stars — the remnants of once-massive stars — that spin rapidly, beaming radiation into space. Now, for the first time, astronomers have mapped the surface of a 16-mile-wide pulsar in exquisite detail. The result challenges astronomers’ textbook picture of a pulsar’s appearance and opens the door to learning more about these extreme objects.https://astronomy.com/news/2019/12/astronomers-map-a-neutron-stars-surface-for-the-first-time
11/14/2020 12:00 PMSome of the participants in SpaceX’s public Starlink beta are reporting internet speeds higher than 95 percent of U.S. internet users.https://futurism.com/the-byte/starlink-beta-outperformed-most-internet-us
11/14/2020 2:00 PMTextbooks had to be rewritten. Members of the public were outraged. Our understanding of the solar system itself was forever changed on Aug. 24, 2006, when researchers at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) voted to reclassify Pluto, changing its status from a planet to a dwarf planet — a relegation that was largely seen as a demotion and which continues to have reverberations to this day.https://www.space.com/why-pluto-is-not-a-planet.html
11/14/2020 4:00 PMResearchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues have demonstrated a room-temperature method that could significantly reduce carbon dioxide levels in fossil-fuel power plant exhaust, one of the main sources of carbon emissions in the atmosphere.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-room-temperature-conversion-co2-hydrocarbons.html
11/14/2020 6:00 PMGlobal warming of 2°C would lead to about 230 billion tons of carbon being released from the world’s soil, new research suggests. Global soils contain two to three times more carbon than the atmosphere, and higher temperatures speed up decomposition—reducing the amount of time carbon spends in the soil (known as “soil carbon turnover”).https://phys.org/news/2020-11-billions-tons-soil-carbon.html
11/15/2020 8:00 AMOur Milky Way galaxy abounds with potentially Earth-like planets, a new study suggests. On average, each sunlike star in the Milky Way likely harbors between 0.4 and 0.9 rocky planets in its “habitable zone,” the just-right range of orbital distances where liquid water could be stable on a world’s surface, researchers have found.https://www.space.com/habitable-planets-common-sunlike-stars-milky-way
11/15/2020 10:00 AMThis past autumn, a professor at Wuhan University named Jau Tang was hard at work piecing together a thruster prototype that, at first, sounds too good to be true. The basic idea, he said in an interview, is that his device turns electricity directly into thrust — no fossil fuels required — by using microwaves to energize compressed air into a plasma state and shooting it out like a jet. Tang suggested, without a hint of self-aggrandizement, that it could likely be scaled up enough to fly large commercial passenger planes. Eventually, he says, it might even power spaceships.https://futurism.com/scientist-jet-engine-electricity-thrust
11/15/2020 12:00 PMResearchers at MIT and the University of Waterloo have developed a high-power, portable version of a device called a quantum cascade laser, which can generate terahertz radiation outside of a laboratory setting. The laser could potentially be used in applications such as pinpointing skin cancer and detecting hidden explosives.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-high-power-portable-terahertz-laser.html
11/15/2020 2:00 PMPhysicists have long known of four fundamental forces of nature: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. Now, they might have evidence of a fifth force.https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/fifth-force-nature
11/15/2020 4:00 PMThe team at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) in South East England has notified the press that testing of plasma has begun on an upgrade to the Mega AMP Spherical Tokamak (MAST)—a new approach to creating a working fusion reactor. In their announcement, the team at CCFE noted that the plasma test has come after seven years of work upgrading the original MAST which has cost approximately £55m.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-team-plasma-mast-ready-super-x.html
11/15/2020 6:00 PMSaturn’s icy moon Enceladus sports a series of parallel, evenly spaced stripes at its south pole. Scientists believe these stripes are long fissures in the icy shell that covers the moon’s subsurface liquid water ocean. But astronomers still aren’t sure how these fissures formed, why they’re so evenly spaced or why other icy worlds don’t have them. Now, a team of researchers has proposed an explanation that could account for all the major questions about this series of fissures.https://astronomy.com/news/2019/12/how-the-icy-moon-enceladus-got-tiger-stripes-at-its-south-pole
11/16/2020 8:00 AMA team of European researchers discovered a new high-pressure mineral in a lunar meteorite which is helping to explain what happens to materials within the extreme pressures of the Earth’s mantle. The new mineral donwilhelmsite is the first high-pressure mineral found in meteorites with application for terrestrial sediments dragged deep into the Earth mantle by plate tectonics. Mainly composed of calcium, aluminum, silicon, and oxygen atoms, donwilhelmsite was discovered within the lunar meteorite Oued Awlitis 001 found in 2014 in the Western Sahara.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-mineral-moon-earth-mantle.html
11/16/2020 10:00 AMResearchers at the University of Liverpool have unlocked new possibilities for the future development of sustainable, clean bioenergy. The study, published in Nature Communications, shows how bacterial protein ‘cages’ can be reprogrammed as nanoscale bioreactors for hydrogen production.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-protein-nanobioreactor-sustainable-bioenergy-production.html
11/16/2020 12:00 PMNew data from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals the popular Sombrero galaxy may have had a more violent past than previously thought. Based on the number of metal-rich stars Hubble spotted in the galaxy’s extended halo, astronomers think the seemingly serene Sombrero galaxy could have once went through a major merger with another galaxy.https://astronomy.com/news/2020/02/hubble-finds-hints-the-sombrero-galaxy-had-a-turbulent-past
11/16/2020 2:00 PMSystems which can emit a stream of single photons, referred to as quantum light sources, are critical hardware components for emerging technologies such as quantum computing, the quantum internet, and quantum communications.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-devil-defect-quantum-emissions-unravelled.html
11/16/2020 4:00 PMWhen it comes to our understanding of the Universe, the 20th century was full of surprises. A little over 100 years ago, we thought that the Milky Way galaxy was home to everything we could see in the sky. We thought the Universe was static, unchanging, and possibly eternal, governed by Newton’s law of universal gravitation.https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/11/03/did-a-black-hole-give-birth-to-our-universe/
11/16/2020 6:00 PMAn international team of planetary scientists led by astronomers at AOP have found an asteroid trailing behind Mars with a composition very similar to the moon’s. The asteroid could be an ancient piece of debris, dating back to the gigantic impacts that formed the moon and the other rocky planets in our solar system like Mars and the Earth. The research, which was published in the journal Icarus, also has implications for finding such primordial objects associated with our own planet.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-mars-shepherd-moon-long-lost-twin.html
11/17/2020 8:00 AMNASA has successfully communicated with the Voyager 2 probe after an eight-month hiatus. The long break in conversation was due to necessary maintenance work on the only Earthly antenna capable today of sending signals to the probe, an effort that until now paused communications with Voyager 2.https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/03/voyager_2_back_online/
11/17/2020 10:00 AMOur galaxy is a whole lot bigger than it looks. New work finds that the Milky Way stretches nearly 2 million light-years across, more than 15 times wider than its luminous spiral disk. The number could lead to a better estimate of how massive the galaxy is and how many other galaxies orbit it.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/astronomers-have-found-edge-milky-way-size
11/17/2020 12:00 PMA very few species of parasitoid wasps can be considered aquatic. Less than 0.1% of the species we know today have been found to enter the water, while searching for potential hosts or living as endoparasitoids inside of aquatic hosts during their larval stage.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-death-video-parasitic-wasp-caterpillar.html
11/17/2020 2:00 PMNorthwestern University researchers have developed a new computational approach to accelerate the design of materials exhibiting metal-insulator transitions (MIT), a rare class of electronic materials that have shown potential to jumpstart future design and delivery of faster microelectronics and quantum information systems—foundational technologies behind Internet of Things devices and large-scale data centers that power how humans work and interact with others.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-approach-optimal-materials-minimal.html
11/17/2020 4:00 PMAmong the most extreme planets discovered beyond the edges of our solar system are lava planets: fiery hot worlds that circle so close to their host star that some regions are likely oceans of molten lava. According to scientists from McGill University, York University, and the Indian Institute of Science Education, the atmosphere and weather cycle of at least one such exoplanet is even stranger, featuring the evaporation and precipitation of rocks, supersonic winds that rage over 5000 km/hr, and a magma ocean 100 km deep.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-supersonic-rocky-lava-planet.html
11/17/2020 6:00 PMSaturn’s moon Titan just keeps getting weirder — and more tantalizing when it comes to scientists’ hopes for life beyond Earth. Titan is perhaps the most Earth-like place in our solar system, except the ingredients are jumbled up: ocean below ground, landforms of water ice instead of rock, rains of organic compounds, an atmosphere even denser than our own. Now, two new research findings add still more intrigue to the strange moon, identifying an unexpected chemical in Titan’s atmosphere and evidence of more complicated surface phenomena than scientists had previously realized.https://www.space.com/titan-has-weird-chemical-and-weathered-craters
11/18/2020 8:00 AMMysterious superpowerful blasts of radio waves once seen only outside the galaxy have for the first time been detected within the Milky Way, new studies find. In addition, scientists have traced these outbursts back to a rare kind of dead star known as a magnetar, the strongest magnets in the universe, for the first time.https://www.space.com/fast-radio-burst-from-magnetar-in-milky-way
11/18/2020 10:00 AMA nugget of amber from Myanmar has been found with a nearly complete baby bird inside. The specimen is one of the several recently discovered amber nuggets with entombed body parts of feathered dinosaurs.http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/baby-bird-found-in-99-million-year-old-amber/
11/18/2020 12:00 PMScientists and graduate students with minority identities who conduct fieldwork report being stalked, followed, sexually assaulted, harassed, threatened, having guns pulled on them and police called on them.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-paper-fieldwork-safety-minority-scientists.html
11/18/2020 2:00 PMResearchers at the University of Rochester and Cornell University have taken an important step toward developing a communications network that exchanges information across long distances by using photons, mass-less measures of light that are key elements of quantum computing and quantum communications systems.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-quantum-properties-transmit.html
11/18/2020 4:00 PMOlder, large-diameter trees have been shown to store disproportionally massive amounts of carbon compared to smaller trees, highlighting their importance in mitigating climate change, according to a new study in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. Researchers examined the aboveground carbon storage of large-diameter trees (>21 inches or >53.3 cm) on National Forest lands within Oregon and Washington. They found that despite only accounting for 3% of the total number of trees on the studied plots, large trees stored 42% of the total above-ground carbon within these forest ecosystems. This study is among the first of its kind to report how a proposed policy could affect carbon storage in forest ecosystems, potentially weakening protections for large-diameter trees and contributing to huge releases of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in the face of a changing climate.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-biggest-trees-capture-carbon-large.html
11/18/2020 6:00 PMA pair of researchers at Syracuse University has found evidence that an ancient squid-like creature with a paperclip-shaped shell may have lived for hundreds of years. Linda Ivany and Emily Artruc outlined their research at this year’s online meeting of the Geological Society of America. They also spoke to the press about their findings.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-ancient-squid-like-creature-paperclip-shaped-shell.html
11/19/2020 8:00 AMBonfire Night celebrations contaminate our air with hugely elevated amounts of soot, scientists have found. Researchers from the University of Leeds were monitoring air quality to determine whether soot created by fires and fireworks, known as black carbon, could help to create ice in clouds.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-bonfire-night-pollution.html
11/19/2020 10:00 AMIn a review paper published in the journal Science, a group of climate experts make the case for including paleoclimate data in the development of climate models. Such models are used globally to assess the impacts of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, predict scenarios for future climate and propose strategies for mitigation.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-key-future-climate-scientists.html
11/19/2020 12:00 PMRising sea levels will affect coasts and human societies in complex and unpredictable ways, according to a new study that examined 12,000 years in which a large island became a cluster of smaller ones.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-sea-level-complex-consequences.html
11/19/2020 2:00 PMThe first quantum revolution brought about semiconductor electronics, the laser and finally the internet. The coming, second quantum revolution promises spy-proof communication, extremely precise quantum sensors and quantum computers for previously unsolvable computing tasks. But this revolution is still in its infancy. A central research object is the interface between local quantum devices and light quanta that enable the remote transmission of highly sensitive quantum information. The Otto-Hahn group “Quantum Networks” at the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching is researching such a “quantum modem”. The team has now achieved a first breakthrough in a relatively simple but highly efficient technology that can be integrated into existing fiber optic networks.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-physicists-efficient-modem-future-quantum.html
11/19/2020 4:00 PMPicture a calm river. Now picture a torrent of white water. What is the difference between the two? To mathematicians and physicists it’s this: The smooth river flows in one direction, while the torrent flows in many different directions at once.https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-prove-batchelors-law-of-turbulence-20200204/
11/19/2020 6:00 PMFor the first time, scientists have visualized a new class of molecular gates that maintain pH balance within brain cells, a critical function that keeps cells alive and helps prevent stroke and other brain injuries.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-near-atomic-reveal-ph-cells.html
11/20/2020 8:00 AMNew research from Tel Aviv University will allow cameras to recognize colors that the human eye and even ordinary cameras are unable to perceive. The technology makes it possible to image gases and substances such as hydrogen, carbon and sodium, each of which has a unique color in the infrared spectrum, as well as biological compounds that are found in nature but are ‘invisible’ to the naked eye or ordinary cameras. It has groundbreaking applications in a variety of fields from computer gaming and photography as well as the disciplines of security, medicine and astronomy.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-technology-cameras-capture-invisible-human.html
11/20/2020 10:00 AMFor several decades, physicists and astrophysicists have theorized about the existence of dark matter in the universe. This elusive type of matter would be made up of particles that do not absorb, reflect or emit light, and that hence cannot be detected using conventional instruments for observing particles.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-solar-axions-xenon1t-excess.html
11/20/2020 12:00 PMEarth’s most arid desert may hold a key to finding life on Mars. Diverse microbes discovered in the clay-rich, shallow soil layers in Chile’s dry Atacama Desert suggest that similar deposits below the Martian surface may contain microorganisms, which could be easily found by future rover missions or landing craft.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-clay-subsoil-earth-driest-life.html
11/20/2020 2:00 PMMammals, birds and amphibians worldwide have lost on average 18% of their natural habitat range as a result of changes in land use and climate change, a new study has found. In a worst-case scenario this loss could increase to 23% over the next 80 years.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-climate-food-demand-species-habitats.html
11/20/2020 4:00 PMSmall shifts in ocean temperature can have significant effects on the eating habits of blackfin tuna during the larval stage of development, when finding food and growing quickly are critical to long-term survival, a new study from Oregon State University researchers has found.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-shifts-temperatures-affect-habits-larval.html
11/20/2020 6:00 PMScientists at the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with Justus-Liebig University, Germany, have uncovered how the genome of SARS-CoV-2—the coronavirus that causes COVID-19—uses genome origami to infect and replicate successfully inside host cells. This could inform the development of effective drugs that target specific parts of the virus genome, in the fight against COVID-19.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-sars-cov-genome-origami-infect-replicate.html
11/21/2020 8:00 AMAccording to legend, Galileo dropped weights off of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, showing that gravity causes objects of different masses to fall with the same acceleration. In recent years, researchers have taken to replicating this test in a way that the Italian scientist probably never envisioned — by dropping atoms.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/galileo-gravity-experiment-atoms-general-relativity-einstein
11/21/2020 10:00 AMBorrowing a page from high-energy physics and astronomy textbooks, a team of physicists and computer scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has successfully adapted and applied a common error-reduction technique to the field of quantum computing.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-particle-physics-methods-quantum.html
11/21/2020 12:00 PMNew data from a Canadian-led team of astronomers, including researchers from the McGill Space Institute and McGill University Department of Physics, strongly suggest that magnetars—a type of neutron star believed to have an extremely powerful magnetic field—could be the source of some fast radio bursts (FRBs). Though much research has been done to explain the mysterious phenomenon, their source has thus far remained elusive and the subject of some debate.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-short-intense-radio-milky.html
11/21/2020 2:00 PMIf we wish to colonize another world, finding a planet with a gravitational field that humans can survive and thrive under will be crucial. If its gravity is too strong our blood will be pulled down into our legs, our bones might break, and we could even be pinned helplessly to the ground.https://astronomy.com/news/2018/09/gravity-to-the-max
11/21/2020 4:00 PMA ground-breaking discovery by Centenary Institute scientists has provided new understanding as to the nature of proteins and how they exist and operate in the human body. The key finding—the changing state of a protein’s structural bonds—is likely to have significant implications as to how proteins are targeted by medical researchers, particularly in terms of drug development and the fight against disease.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-proteins.html
11/21/2020 6:00 PMBee populations in the United States and worldwide are declining for a variety of reasons—habitat change, climate change, insecticide use, disease, urbanization and the introduction of non-native species.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-mid-atlantic-native-bee-populations-decline.html
11/22/2020 8:00 AMBallooning cosmic bubbles in our early universe may have led to the current abundance of dark matter, the elusive substance that tugs on the stars, yet emits no light, a new study suggests.https://www.space.com/new-dark-matter-theory
11/22/2020 10:00 AMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=saved&v=1816527078523975
11/22/2020 12:00 PMAstrophysicists consider that around 40% of the ordinary matter that makes up stars, planets and galaxies remains undetected, concealed in the form of a hot gas in the complex cosmic web. Today, scientists at the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale (CNRS/Université Paris-Saclay) may have detected, for the first time, this hidden matter through an innovative statistical analysis of 20-year-old data.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-hidden-universe.html
11/22/2020 2:00 PMIn 1973, physicist and later Nobel laureate Philip W. Anderson proposed a bizarre state of matter: the quantum spin liquid (QSL). Unlike the everyday liquids we know, the QSL actually has to do with magnetism—and magnetism has to do with spin.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-candidate-material-quantum-liquids.html
11/22/2020 4:00 PMLong neck, small head and a live weight of several tons—with this description you could have tracked down the Plateosaurus in Central Europe about 220 million years ago. Paleontologists at the University of Bonn have now described for the first time an almost complete skeleton of a juvenile Plateosaurus and discovered that it looked very similar to its parents even at a young age. The fact that Plateosaurus showed a largely fully developed morphology at an early age could have important implications for how the young animals lived and moved around. The young Plateosaurus, nicknamed “Fabian,” was discovered in 2015 at the Frick fossil site in Switzerland and is exhibited in the local dinosaur museum.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-baby-dinosaurs-adults.html
11/22/2020 6:00 PMSolving the equations of general relativity for colliding black holes is no simple matter. Physicists began using supercomputers to obtain solutions to this famously hard problem back in the 1960s. In 2000, with no solutions in sight, Kip Thorne, 2018 Nobel Laureate and one of the designers of LIGO, famously bet that there would be an observation of gravitational waves before a numerical solution was reached.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-unequal-black-hole-partners.html
11/23/2020 8:00 AMSuperconductivity is a phenomenon in which an electric circuit loses its resistance and becomes extremely efficient under certain conditions. There are different ways in which this can happen, which were thought to be incompatible. For the first time, researchers have discovered a bridge between two of these methods to achieve superconductivity. This new knowledge could lead to a more general understanding of the phenomenon, and one day to applications.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-superconductor-previously-thought-impossible.html
11/23/2020 10:00 AMAs scientists await the highly anticipated initial results of the Muon g-2 experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, collaborating scientists from DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory continue to employ and maintain the unique system that maps the magnetic field in the experiment with unprecedented precision.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-scientists-standard-particle-physics.html
11/23/2020 12:00 PMA team of scientists has an unusual explanation for how and when dark matter — the invisible, mysterious stuff that’s theorized to make up most of the matter in the universe — was formed. The theory boils down to a brief period of chaos during the earliest moments of the universe, Live Science reports. Basically, after a period of intense heat and energy, the universe began to cool and expand, during which massive blobs of plasma formed like bubbles in a cauldron, creating and filtering out brand-new subatomic particles. If the study holds up, it could guide astronomers toward nailing down the existence of those dark matter particles for the first time.https://futurism.com/the-byte/dark-matter-created-boiling-bubbles-plasma
11/23/2020 2:00 PMIn late summer and autumn, millions of birds fly above our heads, often at night, winging their way toward their wintering grounds.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-migration-molt-affect-birds.html
11/23/2020 4:00 PMA new study by researchers at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science projects an increase in Florida’s late summertime rainfall with rising Atlantic Ocean temperatures.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-rainfall-florida-season.html
11/23/2020 6:00 PMIn a new paper with results that senior author Eric Strieter at the University of Massachusetts Amherst calls “incredibly surprising,” he and his chemistry lab group report that they have discovered how an enzyme known as UCH37 regulates a cell’s waste management system.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-cell-dump-proteins.html
11/24/2020 8:00 AMCeres, the closest dwarf planet to Earth, may be wrinkling as it shrinks, a new study finds. With a width of about 585 miles (940 kilometers), Ceres is both a dwarf planet and the largest member of the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter. Previous research found that the dwarf planet was not made up solely of rock, but composed partly of both icy and rocky material.https://www.space.com/dwarf-planet-ceres-shrinking-wrinkling.html
11/24/2020 10:00 AMBelow the ice-covered surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus hides a vast ocean. This sprawling ocean is likely 1 billion years old, which means it’s the perfect age to harbor life, said Marc Neveu, a research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center last Monday (June 24) during a talk at the 2019 Astrobiology Science Conference.https://www.space.com/enceladus-billion-year-old-ocean.html
11/24/2020 12:00 PMNASA has voiced “substantial concerns” about a planned constellation of broadband satellites, saying the commercial spacecraft would increase the risk of collisions in an important slice of Earth orbit.https://www.space.com/ast-science-satellite-constellation-collision-threat-nasa-warning
11/24/2020 2:00 PMResearchers at Duke University and the University of California, Los Angeles, have developed a biomaterial that significantly reduces scar formation after wounding, leading to more effective skin healing. This new material, which quickly degrades once the wound has closed, demonstrates that activating an adaptive immune response can trigger regenerative wound healing, leaving behind stronger and healthier healed skin.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-wound-healing-biomaterials-immune-stronger-skin.html
11/24/2020 4:00 PMAnimals that live slowly—breeding less rapidly and living longer—could be “reservoirs” of diseases that could jump to new species including humans, new research suggests.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-slow-living-animal-species-disease-reservoirs.html
11/24/2020 6:00 PMAtoms in a gas can seem like partiers at a nanoscopic rave, with particles zipping around, pairing up, and flying off again in seemingly random fashion. And yet physicists have come up with formulas that predict this behavior, even when the atoms are extremely close together and can tug and pull on each other in complicated ways.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-short-range-nuclear-interactions-scientists-neutron.html
11/25/2020 8:00 AMThe capacity of the Amazon forest to store carbon in a changing climate will ultimately be determined by how fast trees die—and what kills them. Now, a huge new study has unravelled what factors control tree mortality rates in Amazon forests and helps to explain why tree mortality is increasing across the Amazon basin.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-scientists-unravel-amazon-trees-die.html
11/25/2020 10:00 AMThe universe lived through a prolonged “Dark Ages” until hydrogen reionized. Now, researchers are closer to figuring out when that happened.https://astronomy.com/news/2016/08/when-did-the-lights-turn-on-in-the-universe
11/25/2020 12:00 PMScientists recently identified the oldest material on Earth: stardust that’s 7 billion years old, tucked away in a massive, rocky meteorite that struck our planet half a century ago.http://www.geologyin.com/2020/01/7-billion-year-old-stardust-is-oldest.html
11/25/2020 2:00 PMAs the icy, ocean-filled moon Europa orbits Jupiter, it withstands a relentless pummeling of radiation. Jupiter zaps Europa’s surface night and day with electrons and other particles, bathing it in high-energy radiation. But as these particles pound the moon’s surface, they may also be doing something otherworldly: making Europa glow in the dark.https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7779
11/25/2020 4:00 PMResearchers in Japan, the US and China say they have found more concrete evidence of the volcanic cause of the largest mass extinction of life. Their research looked at two discrete eruption events: one that was previously unknown to researchers, and the other that resulted in large swaths of terrestrial and marine life going extinct.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-large-volcanic-eruption-largest-mass.html
11/25/2020 6:00 PMThere was a time when the idea of growing organs in the lab was the stuff of science fiction. Today, stem cell biology and tissue engineering are turning fiction into reality with the advent of organoids: tiny lab-grown tissues and organs that are anatomically correct and physiologically functional.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-organoids-embryonic-heart.html
11/26/2020 8:00 AMGroundbreaking science is often the result of true collaboration, with researchers in a variety of fields, viewpoints and experiences coming together in a unique way. One such effort by Clemson University researchers has led to a discovery that could change the way the science of thermoelectrics moves forward.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-decode-thermal.html
11/26/2020 10:00 AMOver the last decade, scientists have been scrambling to understand the impacts of microplastics. With the breakdown of plastic bottles, washing the world’s seven billion fleece jackets, or the microbeads in face cleansers, microplastics are piling up. How they affect living things like plants is still unclear.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-root-microplastics.html
11/26/2020 12:00 PMThree-dimensional (3-D) nanostructured materials—those with complex shapes at a size scale of billionths of a meter—that can conduct electricity without resistance could be used in a range of quantum devices. For example, such 3-D superconducting nanostructures could find application in signal amplifiers to enhance the speed and accuracy of quantum computers and ultrasensitive magnetic field sensors for medical imaging and subsurface geology mapping. However, traditional fabrication tools such as lithography have been limited to 1-D and 2-D nanostructures like superconducting wires and thin films.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-d-nanosuperconductors-dna.html
11/26/2020 2:00 PMA team of physicists from the U.S., Poland and Germany proposes to use quantum sensor networks such as atomic clocks of the GPS network or sensors from the Gnome collaboration (a network of shielded atomic magnetometers made up of 13 stations placed strategically on four continents—each of which is equipped with a magnetometer that has sub-picotesla sensitivity) to detect exotic ultralight fields (ELDs). In their paper, the group describes theoretical calculations to predict the types of signals that might make up ELDs and how they might be detected.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-physicists-atomic-clocks-gps-network.html
11/26/2020 4:00 PMLightning struck a bourbon warehouse, setting fire to a cache of 800,000 gallons of liquor in the Bardstown countryside of Kentucky in 2003. Some of it spilled into a nearby creek, spawning a massive fire tornado, or ‘bourbonado,’ as reported locally.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-blue-flame-revealed-supercomputers.html
11/26/2020 6:00 PMAustralian researchers say the discovery of a two-million-year-old skull in South Africa throws more light on human evolution. The skull was a male Paranthropus robustus, a “cousin species” to Homo erectus – a species thought to be direct ancestors of modern humans.https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54882214
11/27/2020 8:00 AMResearchers from UCLA believe using plasma could promise a significant breakthrough in the fight against the spread of COVID-19.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-plasma-treatments-quickly-coronavirus-surfaces.html
11/27/2020 10:00 AMOn Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, powerful eruptions may spew into space, raising questions among hopeful astrobiologists on Earth: What would blast out from miles-high plumes? Could they contain signs of extraterrestrial life? And where in Europa would they originate? A new explanation now points to a source closer to the frozen surface than might be expected.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-source-eruption-jupiter-moon-europa.html
11/27/2020 12:00 PMMaterials can assume completely different properties depending on temperature, pressure, electrical voltage or other physical quantities. In theoretical solid-state physics, state-of-the-art computer models are used to understand these properties in detail. Sometimes this works well, but sometimes strange effects occur that still seem puzzling—such as phenomena linked to high-temperature superconductivity.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-sticky-electrons-repulsion.html
11/27/2020 2:00 PMThe United Arab Emirates’ first mission to Mars will reach the Red Planet on Feb. 9, 2021, Emirates government officials said. The mission’s Hope orbiter should arrive at Mars in the same year as the 50th anniversary of the country’s formation, UAE officials said in a statement just after Hope successfully completed its third trajectory correction.https://www.space.com/uae-mars-hope-mission-halfway-to-red-planet
11/27/2020 4:00 PMThe universe is getting hotter, a new study has found. The study, published Oct. 13 in the Astrophysical Journal, probed the thermal history of the universe over the last 10 billion years. It found that the mean temperature of gas across the universe has increased more than 10 times over that time period and reached about 2 million degrees Kelvin today—approximately 4 million degrees Fahrenheit.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-universe-hot.html
11/27/2020 6:00 PMIn a story of lost and stolen books and scrupulous detective work across continents, a Caltech historian and his former student have unearthed previously uncounted copies of Isaac Newton’s groundbreaking science book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, known more colloquially as the Principia. The new census more than doubles the number of known copies of the famous first edition, published in 1687. The last census of this kind, published in 1953, had identified 187 copies, while the new Caltech survey finds 386 copies. Up to 200 additional copies, according to the study authors, likely still exist undocumented in public and private collections.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-hundreds-newton-principia-census.html
11/28/2020 8:00 AMThe amount of long-lived radioactive elements incorporated into a rocky planet as it forms may be a crucial factor in determining its future habitability, according to a new study by an interdisciplinary team of scientists at UC Santa Cruz.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-radioactive-elements-crucial-habitability-rocky.html
11/28/2020 10:00 AMAccording to a new Finnish study, different groups of insectivores compete for the same type of food. Researchers of the University of Turku, Finland, and the Finnish Museum of Natural History made a discovery by comparing birds, bats and dragonflies that forage in the same area in Southwest Finland. These very distantly related predators consumed the same insect groups, such as flies, mosquitoes, and other dipterans. The results shed new light on the decline in insect populations, because a remarkable portion of insectivores may actually be in greater danger than previously believed.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-dietary-overlap-birds-dragonflies-disadvantageous.html
11/28/2020 12:00 PMMales of the extinct human species Paranthropus robustus were thought to be substantially larger than females—much like the size differences seen in modern-day primates such as gorillas, orangutans and baboons. But a new fossil discovery in South Africa instead suggests that P. robustus evolved rapidly during a turbulent period of local climate change about 2 million years ago, resulting in anatomical changes that previously were attributed to sex.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-newly-fossil-small-scale-evolutionary-extinct.html
11/28/2020 2:00 PMA Nobel Prize is just the latest proof that a concept rejected by Einstein in 1939 has become one of the hottest topics in physics.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/black-hole-are-finally-trending/
11/28/2020 4:00 PMLightning never strikes twice, so the saying goes, but new technology may allow us to control where it hits the ground, reducing the risk of catastrophic bushfires.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-tractor-potential-lightning.html
11/28/2020 6:00 PMScientists may have caught the blinding flash of two dense neutron stars colliding to form a strange magnetic star.https://www.space.com/extra-bright-kilonova-from-neutron-star-collision
11/29/2020 8:00 AMStar explosions may have played a greater role in Earth’s climate history than scientists thought. Nearby supernovas have left a series of possible fingerprints in the tree-ring record here on Earth over the past 40,000 years, potentially disrupting our planet’s climate multiple times over this span, a new study reports.https://www.space.com/supernova-explosions-affect-earth-atmosphere
11/29/2020 10:00 AMBoeing’s next test flight of its CST-100 Starliner commercial crew capsule for NASA won’t launch until early 2021 due to ongoing software checks, a NASA official said.https://www.space.com/boeing-orbital-flight-test-2-early-2021-launch
11/29/2020 12:00 PMThe search for dark matter – an unknown and invisible substance thought to make up the vast majority of matter in the universe – is at a crossroads. Although it was proposed nearly 70 years ago and has been searched for intensely – with large particle colliders, detectors deep underground and even instruments in space – it is still nowhere to be found.https://www.space.com/dark-matter-haloes-imprint-galactic-gas
11/29/2020 2:00 PMUW Medicine researchers at the Brotman Baty Institute in Seattle have created two cell atlases that track gene expression and chromatin accessibility during the development of human cell types and tissues. One atlas maps gene expression within individual cells across 15 fetal tissues. The second atlas maps the chromatin accessibility of individual genes within the cells.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-molecular-atlases-reveal-human-cells.html
11/29/2020 4:00 PMIn an important step during the early evolution of life on Earth, the formation of the amino acid cysteine delivered vital catalysts, which enabled the earliest protein molecules to form in water, according to a new study by UCL researchers.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-cysteine-synthesis-key-life.html
11/29/2020 6:00 PMA long time ago—roughly 4.5 billion years—our sun and solar system formed over the short time span of 200,000 years. That is the conclusion of a group of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists after looking at isotopes of the element molybdenum found on meteorites.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-solar-years.html
11/30/2020 8:00 AMBeavers are some of the world’s most prolific ecosystem engineers, creating, maintaining and radically altering wetlands almost everywhere they live. But what, if anything, might control this engineering by beavers and influence the formation of North America’s wetlands?https://phys.org/news/2020-11-wolves-wetland-creation-recolonization-ecosystem.html
11/30/2020 10:00 AMMice put human runners to shame. Despite taking puny strides, the rodents can log 10 kilometers or more per night on an exercise wheel. But the mice that muscle biologist Eric Olson of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and colleagues unveiled in 2015 stood out. On a treadmill, the mice could scurry up a steep 10% grade for about 90 minutes before faltering, 31% longer than other rodents. Those iron mice differed from counterparts in just one small way—the researchers had genetically altered the animals to lack one muscle protein. That was enough to unleash superior muscle performance. “It’s like you’ve taken the brakes off,” Olson says.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/new-universe-miniproteins-upending-cell-biology-and-genetics
11/30/2020 12:00 PMIf warp drives didn’t exist in science fiction, the Enterprise’s mission statement would have been “slowly going where no one has gone before.” And never getting there, at least in a single Generation. The spaces between places in space are, in the real universe, so vast that the ability to jump from planet to planet would have to exceed the speed of light. In sci-fi, “Warp 5” means five times that speed. As far as we know, faster-than-light (FTL) travel is impossible. But maybe there’s another way…https://bigthink.com/technology-innovation/alcubierre-drive
11/30/2020 2:00 PMIn a study that gives new meaning to the term “rock bottom,” seismic researchers have discovered the underside of a rocky slab of Earth’s surface layer, or lithosphere, that has been pulled more than 400 miles beneath northeastern China by the process of tectonic subduction.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-piece-pacific-ocean-floor-imaged.html
11/30/2020 4:00 PMMosasaurs were the real leviathans of the Mesozoic Era, gigantic marine lizards that grew as large as whales. Some were wide-ranging hunters of large prey while others snacked on shellfish at the bottom of shallow seas. They became the biggest predators of the Cretaceous oceans in just 25 million years, a short period in geologic time. (yes, we’re aware the article is three years old – still fascinating!)http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/mosasaurs-last-of-the-great-marine-reptiles/
11/30/2020 6:00 PMEven if humanity stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, Earth will warm for centuries to come and oceans will rise by metres, according to a controversial modelling study.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-greenhouse-gas-emissions-global.html
12/1/2020 8:00 AMMars once had oceans but is now bone-dry, leaving many to wonder how the water was lost. University of Arizona researchers have discovered a surprisingly large amount of water in the upper atmosphere of Mars, where it is rapidly destroyed, explaining part of this Martian mystery.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-mars-fled-red-planet.html
12/1/2020 10:00 AMT10
12/1/2020 12:00 PMA team of researchers from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Leiden University, Tohoku University and the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter has developed a new type of MRI scanner that can image waves in ultrathin magnets. Unlike electrical currents, these so-called spin waves produce little heat, making them promising signal carriers for future green ICT applications.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-mri-like-technique-imaging-magnetic.html
12/1/2020 2:00 PMNASA is asking university students to come up with a solution to a very real problem: sticky lunar dust that can get pretty much anywhere, meaning it poses a very real threat to anybody planning to spend much time on the surface of the Moon. The goal is a solution that can remove lunar dust or make surfaces impermeable to the stuff.https://futurism.com/nasa-lunar-dust-competition
12/1/2020 4:00 PMThe fungus that some dogs carry in their nose evolves within the dog’s nose. The genetic changes indicate adaptation of the fungus to the dog. That’s also of importance for humans, since infection with this fungus can be deadly. Researchers of Utrecht University gained these new insights in research on natural infections of dogs that came with an inflammation at the veterinarian. The study thus also shows that studying natural infections is an alternative to experiments with laboratory animals.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-dogs-war-fungus.html
12/1/2020 6:00 PMA major technical challenge for any practical, real-world quantum computer comes from the need for a large number of physical qubits to deal with errors that accumulate during computation. Such quantum error correction is resource-intensive and computationally time-consuming. But researchers have found an effective software method that enables significant compression of quantum circuits, relaxing the demands placed on hardware development.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-approach-circuit-compression-real-world-quantum.html
12/2/2020 8:00 AMA group of astronomers from The University of Texas at Austin has found that a telescope idea shelved by NASA a decade ago can solve a problem that no other telescope can: It would be able to study the first stars in the universe.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-texas-astronomers-revive-idea-ultimately.html
12/2/2020 10:00 AMT10
12/2/2020 12:00 PMSocial insects like honeybees and hornets evolved from solitary bees and wasps, respectively. A common trait of many social insects is age-specific behavior: when they emerge from the pupa, workers typically specialize in around-the-clock tasks inside the darkness of the nest, starting with brood care. But they gradually shift towards more cyclic tasks away from center of the nest as they get older—culminating in foraging outside, exclusively in daylight, towards the end of their life. Here, researchers find evidence that this shift from around-the-clock to rhythmic tasks, which does not occur in solitary insects, seems to be driven by a slower maturation of the endogenous (i.e. internal) “circadian” clock of social honeybees compared to solitary bees.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-solitary-bees-born-functional-internal.html
12/2/2020 2:00 PMMillions of years ago, in the warm Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California, walrus species without tusks lived abundantly. But in a new study, Cal State Fullerton paleontologists have identified three new walrus species discovered in Orange County and one of the new species has “semi-tusks”—or longer teeth.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-paleontologists-uncover-species-extinct-walruses.html
12/2/2020 4:00 PMAcross America, hazardous waste sites pose an ongoing threat to human and environmental health. The most severe cases are known as Superfund sites, of which over a thousand currently exist. Some 50 million Americans live within three miles of one of these zones, potentially placing them at increased risk for cancer and other serious diseases.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-microbial-remedies-chemical-threats-environment.html
12/2/2020 6:00 PMTheories on how the Milky Way formed are set to be rewritten following discoveries about the behavior of some of its oldest stars.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-orbits-ancient-stars-prompt-rethink.html
12/3/2020 8:00 AMA researcher from The Australian National University (ANU) has used one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world to predict the quantum mechanical properties of large molecular systems with an accuracy that surpasses all previous experiments.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-quantum-chemistry.html
12/3/2020 10:00 AMT10
12/3/2020 12:00 PMhttps://www.space.com/16-year-mystery-blue-ring-nebula-solved
12/3/2020 2:00 PMResearch done by Krista McLennan of Northampton University indicates that cows do indeed have ‘best friends’.https://plantbasednews.org/culture/the-science-of-cow-friendship-cows-have-best-friends/
12/3/2020 4:00 PMIn high school textbooks, human chromosomes are pictured as wonky Xs like two hotdogs jammed together. But those images are far from accurate. “For 90 percent of the time,” said Jun-Han Su, “chromosomes don’t exist like that.”https://phys.org/news/2020-11-chromosomes.html
12/3/2020 6:00 PMAn international team of scientists has defied nature to make diamonds in minutes in a laboratory at room temperature—a process that normally requires billions of years, huge amounts of pressure and super-hot temperatures.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-scientists-insta-bling-room-temperature.html
12/4/2020 8:00 AMAalto University researchers have developed a black silicon photodetector that has reached above 130% efficiency. Thus, for the first time, a photovoltaic device has exceeded the 100% limit, which has earlier been considered as the theoretical maximum for external quantum efficiency.https://phys.org/news/2020-08-black-silicon-photodetector-efficiency-limit.html
12/4/2020 10:00 AMT10
12/4/2020 12:00 PMThe three largest glaciers in Greenland—which hold enough frozen water to lift global sea levels some 1.3 metres—could melt faster than even the worst-case warming predictions, research published Tuesday showed.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-greenland-largest-glaciers-faster.html
12/4/2020 2:00 PMThe infectious disease Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. While rates of TB in Canada have remained relatively static since the 1980s, the disease disproportionately affects Indigenous populations. With TB-causing bacteria becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics, researchers and drug makers are eager to find new, more effective treatments.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-scientists-potential-method-starve-bacteria.html
12/4/2020 4:00 PMUsing an amateur 0.14-m aperture telescope, astronomers have observed a nearby spiral galaxy known as M63 (or NGC 5055). The observations identified the presence of five faint dwarf galaxies around M63 and allowed the researchers to determine their basic parameters.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-dwarf-galaxies-m63.html
12/4/2020 6:00 PMAmong seismologists, the geology of Alaska’s earthquake- and volcano-rich coast from the Aleutian Islands to the southeast is fascinating, but not well understood. Now, with more sophisticated tools than before, a University of Massachusetts Amherst team reports unexpected new details about the area’s tectonic plates and their relationships to volcanoes.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-piecing-alaska-coastline-fractured-volcanic.html
12/5/2020 8:00 AMEver since Nikola Tesla spewed electricity in all directions with his coil back in 1891, scientists have been thinking up ways to send electrical power through the air. The dream is to charge your phone or laptop, or maybe even a healthcare device such as a pacemaker, without the need for wires and plugs. The tricky bit is getting the electricity to find its intended target, and getting that target to absorb the electricity instead of just reflect it back into the air—all preferably without endangering anyone along the way.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-anti-laser-enable-long-range-wireless-power.html
12/5/2020 10:00 AMT10
12/5/2020 12:00 PMIt is something quite common in physics: Electrons leave a certain material, fly away and are then measured. Some materials emit electrons when they are irradiated with light. These electrons are called photoelectrons. In materials research, so-called Auger electrons also play an important role—they can be emitted by atoms if an electron is first removed from one of the inner electron shells. But now scientists at TU Wien (Vienna) have succeeded in explaining a completely different type of electron emission that can occur in carbon materials such as graphite. This electron emission type has been known for about 50 years, but its cause was previously unclear.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-previously-unknown-mechanism-electron-emission.html
12/5/2020 2:00 PMScientists may have caught the blinding flash of two dense neutron stars colliding to form a strange magnetic star.https://www.space.com/extra-bright-kilonova-from-neutron-star-collision
12/5/2020 4:00 PMIn some ways, drilling into Antarctica’s ancient ice is easier than interpreting it. Today, more than 2 years after presenting the discovery of the world’s oldest ice core, scientists have published an analysis of the 2.7-million-year-old sample. One surprising finding: Air bubbles from 1.5 million years ago—from a time before the planet’s ice age cycles suddenly doubled in length—contain lower than expected levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), a possible clue to the shift in the ice age cycle.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/world-s-oldest-ice-core-could-solve-mystery-flipped-ice-age-cycles
12/5/2020 6:00 PMThe last decade has been marked by a series of remarkable discoveries identifying how the universe is composed. It is understood that the mysterious substance dark matter makes up 85 % of the matter in the universe. Observable matter in the universe consists of ionized particles. Thus, a profound understanding of ionized matter and its interaction with light, could lead to a deeper understanding of the relationships at play that formed the universe. While ionized matter, or plasma, is relatively easy to generate in the lab, studying it is extremely challenging as methods that can capture ionization states and density are virtually non-existant.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-succeeded-formation-interaction-highly-ionized.html
12/6/2020 8:00 AMFor over a decade, theoretical physicists have predicted that the van Hove singularity of graphene could be associated with different exotic phases of matter, the most notable of which is chiral superconductivity.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-technique-over-dope-graphene-van-hove.html
12/6/2020 10:00 AMT10
12/6/2020 12:00 PMJust after sunset on the evening of Dec. 21, Jupiter and Saturn will appear closer together in Earth’s night sky than they have been since the Middle Ages, offering people the world over a celestial treat to ring in the winter solstice.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-december-jupiter-saturn-planet-middle.html
12/6/2020 2:00 PMChina livestreamed footage of its new manned submersible parked at the bottom of the Mariana Trench on Friday, part of a historic mission into the deepest underwater valley on the planet.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-chinese-submersible-earth-deepest-ocean.html
12/6/2020 4:00 PMScientists working with data from the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys’ Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) have discovered a “fossil galaxy” hidden in the depths of our own Milky Way.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-astronomers-fossil-galaxy-deep-milky.html
12/6/2020 6:00 PMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=saved&v=384435922678223
12/7/2020 8:00 AMIt’s not every day that we come across a paper that attempts to redefine reality. But in a provocative preprint uploaded to arXiv this summer, a physics professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth named Vitaly Vanchurin attempts to reframe reality in a particularly eye-opening way — suggesting that we’re living inside a massive neural network that governs everything around us. In other words, he wrote in the paper, it’s a “possibility that the entire universe on its most fundamental level is a neural network.”https://futurism.com/physicist-entire-universe-neural-network
12/7/2020 10:00 AMT10
12/7/2020 12:00 PMMicrosoft researchers waited more than two years to be assigned a patent that brings the possibility of storing data on DNA a little closer – a move likely to make backup media such as tape obsolete.https://www.techradar.com/news/heres-microsoft-secret-recipe-for-storage-success-salt-and-dna
12/7/2020 2:00 PMSkeletal remains of what are believed to have been a rich man and his male slave attempting to escape death from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago have been discovered in Pompeii, officials at the archaeological park in Italy said.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-bodies-slave-unearthed-ashes-pompeii.html
12/7/2020 4:00 PMWhat if you could hitch a ride on NASA’s Juno spacecraft at Jupiter? We may be stuck on Earth, but the space agency has given us the next best option: a new video flyover of Jupiter based on photos from Juno’s recent flyby in June.https://www.space.com/jupiter-flyby-video-from-nasa-juno-probe
12/7/2020 6:00 PMGeorge Seielstad knows what it’s like to have a massive telescope fall apart on your watch. Seielstad was director at Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia when he got a very bad call on Nov. 15, 1988. “You have a telescope down,” the voice on the phone said. It could have been no big deal, a minor electronics failure, perhaps. But it was much worse. The observatory’s prime 300-foot (91 meters) telescope was the most literal definition of “down” — it had simply collapsed, with no warning.https://www.space.com/arecibo-observatory-green-bank-telescope-collapse-lessons
12/8/2020 8:00 AMScientists have discovered a cold, faint “super-planet” that has remained elusive to traditional infrared survey methods. Observations from the Low-Frequency Array, or LOFAR radio telescope, revealed a brown dwarf, which researchers have designated BDR J1750+3809 and nicknamed Elegast. Brown dwarfs are sometimes referred to as failed stars or super-planets because they are too small to be considered stars, yet too big to be considered planets.https://www.space.com/super-planet-found-using-radio-telescopes
12/8/2020 10:00 AMT10
12/8/2020 12:00 PMMothers leave their mark on their children in many ways—and WEHI researchers have discovered a protein called SMCHD1 is involved in this ‘imprinting’ process.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-mother-lingers-child-genes.html
12/8/2020 2:00 PMEngineers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory are prototyping a previously theoretical rocket design that could someday take spacecraft to interstellar space. Their plan? Use heat from the sun, rather than combustion, to power a rocket engine.https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a34757028/rocket-engine-solar-thermal-propulsion-interstellar-travel/
12/8/2020 4:00 PMAmerican alligators are about as close to dinosaurs as you can get in modern times, and can grow up to 14 feet in length. While much smaller reptiles such as lizards are able to regenerate their tails, the question of whether the much larger alligator is able to regrow their massive tails has not been well studied. A team of researchers from Arizona State University and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries have uncovered that young alligators have the ability to regrow their tails up to three-quarters of a foot, or 18% of their total body length.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-lizardsalligators-regrow-tails.html
12/8/2020 6:00 PMSpace isn’t as dark as we think, NPR reports. Using images taken by New Horizons, a spacecraft now more than 6 billion kilometers from Earth, scientists analyzed blank areas of space without bright stars. Even after accounting for light from surrounding stars, known galaxies, and even camera equipment, about half of the light in these seemingly barren areas of space remained unexplained, they report. This light could originate from faint, unknown galaxies that tools like the Hubble Space Telescope cannot detect or it could even be generated by an as-yet-unidentified phenomenon associated with dark matter, scientists say.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/space-filled-unexplained-light
12/9/2020 8:00 AMGreenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the main driver of climate change, hit record highs last year and have continued climbing in 2020 despite measures to halt the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN said Monday.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-greenhouse-gas-high-covid-.html
12/9/2020 10:00 AMT10
12/9/2020 12:00 PMWhy is a parsec 3.26 light-years and not some other number?https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2020/02/why-is-a-parsec-326-light-years
12/9/2020 2:00 PMWithin a single cell, thousands of molecules, such as proteins, ions, and other signaling molecules, work together to perform all kinds of functions—absorbing nutrients, storing memories, and differentiating into specific tissues, among many others.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-imaging-method-reveals-symphony-cellular.html
12/9/2020 4:00 PMForest-dwelling bacteria known for forming slimy swarms that prey on other microbes can also cooperate to construct mushroom-like survival shelters known as fruiting bodies when food is scarce. Now a team at Princeton University has discovered the physics behind how these rod-shaped bacteria, which align in patterns like those on fingerprint whorls and liquid crystal displays, build the layers of these fruiting bodies.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-social-bacteria-physics-fingerprints.html
12/9/2020 6:00 PMPaleontologists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and the University of Calgary in Canada have provided new proof of parallel evolution: conodonts, early vertebrates from the Permian period, adapted to new habitats in almost identical ways despite living in different geographical regions. The researchers were able to prove that this was the case using fossil teeth found in different geographical locations.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-paleontologists-identical-evolution-isolated.html
12/10/2020 8:00 AMA well-known leaf-cutting ant grows its own body armour using biominerals, a protective power previously unknown in the insect world, scientists have discovered in research published Tuesday showing this makes the ants almost unbeatable in battle.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-leaf-cutter-ant-insect-biomineral-body.html
12/10/2020 10:00 AMT10
12/10/2020 12:00 PMIs that light particle more like a ball careening through space, or more of a smeary mess that is everywhere at once? The answer depends on whether the absurd laws of subatomic particles or the deterministic equations that govern larger objects hold more sway.https://www.space.com/quantifying-quantumness
12/10/2020 2:00 PMhttps://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/A-sweeter-song-Bay-Area-sparrows-thriving-15751778.php
12/10/2020 4:00 PMAlkaline water electrolysis has been touted as a path to establish a hydrogen economy by converting intermittent renewable energies into clean hydrogen-based chemical energy.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-d-electrodes-free-gas.html
12/10/2020 6:00 PMMetabolic robustness, the ability of a metabolic system to buffer changes in its environment, is not always a welcome feature for microbiologists: it interferes with metabolic engineering or prevents that antibiotics kill bacteria. Therefore it is important to understand the mechanisms that enable metabolic robustness. A massively parallel CRISPRi screen demonstrated that E. coli metabolism is very robust against knockdowns of enzymes, and multi-omics data revealed the mechanisms behind it. In the future, the researchers want to apply this knowledge to build better models of metabolism, which enable rational-design of industrial microbes.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-crispri-screens-reveal-sources-metabolic.html
12/11/2020 8:00 AMMost of Earth’s surface has been plotted, mapped and measured. And along the way, scientists have turned up a plethora of craters big and small. But there was always one major crater missing.https://astronomy.com/news/2018/11/massive-impact-crater-beneath-greenland-could-explain-ice-age-climate-swing
12/11/2020 10:00 AMScientists have built tiny droplet-based microbial factories that produce hydrogen, instead of oxygen, when exposed to daylight in air.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-hydrogen-producing-droplets-paving-alternative-future.html
12/11/2020 12:00 PMWhy physics suggests there are hidden dimensions besides the ones we know.https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p08ybyvp/why-physics-suggests-other-dimensions-exist
12/11/2020 2:00 PMA trio of researchers from Northwestern University, Metropolitan State University of Denver and Argonne National Laboratory has found that using X-ray diffraction on mummies makes it possible to see inside the wrappings without opening them. In their paper published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, S. Stock, M. Stock and J. Almer describe scanning an Egyptian mummy in two ways and what they found by doing so.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-x-ray-diffraction-reveals-mummies.html
12/11/2020 4:00 PMAn international team of about 100 scientists of the Borexino Collaboration, including particle physicist Andrea Pocar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, report in Nature this week detection of neutrinos from the sun, directly revealing for the first time that the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO) fusion-cycle is at work in our sun.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-neutrinos-yield-experimental-evidence-catalyzed.html
12/11/2020 6:00 PMThe mysterious, aurora-like phenomenon called STEVE just got a little weirder. If you don’t know STEVE (short for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement) by name, you may know it from photos. Unlike the infamous Southern and Northern Lights, which blanket the sky in ethereal green swirls near Earth’s magnetic poles, STEVE appears as a purplish-white ribbon of light that slashes diagonally toward the horizon, stretching hundreds of miles through the atmosphere. It can appear closer to the equator than a typical aurora, and is often accompanied by a “picket fence” of jagged green points dancing beside it.https://www.space.com/steve-picket-fence-streaks-mystery
12/12/2020 8:00 AMFor the first time, scientists were able to directly measure the sort of nuclear fusion happening at the Sun’s core.https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-decipher-suns-nuclear-fusion
12/12/2020 10:00 AMThe deep seas—vast expanses of water and seabed hidden more than 200 meters below the ocean surface to depths up to 11,000 meters—are recognized globally as an important frontier of science and discovery.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-scientists-decade-concerted-effort-deep.html
12/12/2020 12:00 PMNanoparticles are promising drug delivery tools, offering the ability to administer drugs directly to a specific part of the body and avoid the awful side effects so often seen with chemotherapeutics.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-tunable-coating-hitch-hiking-nanoparticles-immune.html
12/12/2020 2:00 PMFreshwater fish reserves are extraordinarily successful at protecting multiple species of fish, a new study of a network of community-based reserves in Thailand has found.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-thailand-benefits-community-based-freshwater-fish.html
12/12/2020 4:00 PMThe water-to-land transition is one of the most important and inspiring major transitions in vertebrate evolution. And the question of how and when tetrapods transitioned from water to land has long been a source of wonder and scientific debate.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-water-to-land-transition-early-tetrapods.html
12/12/2020 6:00 PMA Cretaceous-age, crow-sized bird from Madagascar would have sliced its way through the air wielding a large, blade-like beak and offers important new insights on the evolution of face and beak shape in the Mesozoic forerunners of modern birds. An international team of researchers led by Ohio University professor Dr. Patrick O’Connor and Stony Brook University professor Dr. Alan H. Turner announced the discovery.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-bird-tall-sickle-shaped-beak-reveals.html
12/13/2020 8:00 AMThe quantum sensing abilities of nanodiamonds can be used to improve the sensitivity of paper-based diagnostic tests, potentially allowing for earlier detection of diseases such as HIV, according to a study led by UCL researchers in the i-sense McKendry group.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-quantum-nanodiamonds-disease-earlier.html
12/13/2020 10:00 AMThe Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is a pair of enormous research facilities in the United States dedicated to detecting ripples in the fabric of space-time known as gravitational waves. Such signals come from massive objects in the universe, such as black holes and neutron stars, and provide astronomers with an entirely new window to observe cosmic phenomena.https://www.space.com/LIGO-Laser-Interferometer-Gravitational-Wave-Observatory.html
12/13/2020 12:00 PMOnly the two Voyager spacecraft have ever been there, and it took than more than 30 years of supersonic travel. It lies well past the orbit of Pluto, through the rocky Kuiper belt, and on for four times that distance. This realm, marked only by an invisible magnetic boundary, is where Sun-dominated space ends: the closest reaches of interstellar space.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/new-evidence-our-neighborhood-in-space-is-stuffed-with-hydrogen
12/13/2020 2:00 PMThe European Space Agency says it is signing a 86 million-euro ($102 million) contract with a Swiss start-up company to bring a large piece of orbital trash back to Earth.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-europe-102m-space-trash-home.html
12/13/2020 4:00 PMMahesh Bandi, a physicist with the Nonlinear and Non-equilibrium Physics Unit, OIST Graduate University, Onna, Okinawa, has found a way to produce N95-type respirator filters that is less expensive and quicker than conventional approaches. In his paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, he describes the technique he developed and how well his filters performed.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-physicist-n95-type-respirators-cotton-candy.html
12/13/2020 6:00 PMMelanin’s high refractive index (RI) and broadband absorption capability contribute to the pigment’s ability to protect against ultraviolet radiation (UV). These optical properties also contribute to the vibrant structural colors seen in birds and many other animals and plants.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-ultraviolet-exposure-ability-synthetic-melanin.html
12/14/2020 8:00 AMNew data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope provides further evidence for tidal disruption in the galaxy NGC 1052-DF4. This result explains a previous finding that this galaxy is missing most of its dark matter. By studying the galaxy’s light and globular cluster distribution, astronomers have concluded that the gravity forces of the neighbouring galaxy NGC 1035 stripped the dark matter from NGC 1052-DF4 and are now tearing the galaxy apart.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-hubble-dark.html
12/14/2020 10:00 AMIn Nevada’s dry Ivanpah Valley, just southeast of Las Vegas, a massive unintended experiment in animal conservation has revealed an unexpected result.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-threatened-tortoises-strategy.html
12/14/2020 12:00 PMLaser powder bed fusion is a dominant additive manufacturing technology that has yet to reach its potential. The problem facing industry is that tiny bubbles or pores sometimes form during the printing process, and these pores create weak spots in finished products.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-route-defects-additive.html
12/14/2020 2:00 PMAs the global coronavirus pandemic continues, scientists are not only trying to find vaccines and drugs to combat it, but also to continuously learn more about the virus itself. “By now we can expect the coronavirus to become seasonal,” explains Ralf Bartenschlager, professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases, Molecular Virology, at Heidelberg University. “Thus, there is an urgent need to develop and implement both prophylactic and therapeutic strategies against this virus.” In a new study, Bartenschlager, assisted by the Schwab team at EMBL Heidelberg and using EMBL’s Electron Microscopy Core Facility, performed a detailed imaging analysis to determine how the virus reprograms infected cells.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-replication-sars-cov-d.html
12/14/2020 4:00 PMEarth just got 7 km/s faster and about 2000 light-years closer to the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. But don’t worry, this doesn’t mean that our planet is plunging towards the black hole. Instead the changes are results of a better model of the Milky Way Galaxy based on new observation data, including a catalog of objects observed over the course of more than 15 years by the Japanese radio astronomy project VERA.https://www.miz.nao.ac.jp/veraserver/hilight/20201125_catalog/index-e.html
12/14/2020 6:00 PMBlack holes are thought to gobble up so much surrounding material that they put an end to the life of their host galaxy. In that process they create a highly energetic object called a quasar which was previously thought to halt star birth. Now researchers have found a galaxy that is surviving the ravenous forces of a quasar by continuing to birth new stars –about 100 Sun-sized stars a year.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-galaxy-survives-black-hole-feastfor.html
12/15/2020 8:00 AMThe idea that modern humans displaced Neanderthals because they were better protected against toxic smoke components is now under fire. An earlier study that put forward this suggestion has now been refuted by genetic research by scientists from Leiden and Wageningen.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-genetic-reveals-neanderthals-tolerate-toxins.html
12/15/2020 10:00 AMThe proliferation of pits and ponds created in recent years by miners digging for small deposits of alluvial gold in Peru’s Amazon has dramatically altered the landscape and increased the risk of mercury exposure for indigenous communities and wildlife, a new study shows.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-ponds-amplify-mercury-peru-amazon.html
12/15/2020 12:00 PMNasa has started assembling the first Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on a launch platform ahead of its maiden flight next year. The SLS is the giant rocket that will send US astronauts back to the Moon this decade – with the first crewed landing targeted for 2024.https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55070302
12/15/2020 2:00 PMA comet discovered last year is offering scientists new insights into how these objects “turn on” and evolve, as it actually transitions out of the Centaur population and into the Jupiter Family of Comets (JFCs), according to a paper by Planetary Science Institute Research Scientist Jordan Steckloff.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-comet-ld2-atlas-transitioning.html
12/15/2020 4:00 PMNew research by scientists from Delft University of Technology and the University of Duisburg-Essen uses the motion of atomically thin graphene to identify noble gasses. These gasses are chemically passive and do not react with other materials, which makes it challenging to detect them.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-graphene-balloons-noble-gases.html
12/15/2020 6:00 PMA rogue planet long escaped from its home stellar system may not be so alone on its trip. 2MASS J11193254–1137466 was announced last year as an untethered planetary-mass system in the TW Hydrae association, a grouping of stars with a center point about 95 light-years away. 1137466 is around 160 light-years away, but its motion indicates an 80 percent possibility that it’s part of this grouping of young stars. And a recent analysis suggests that it’s not one large planet but two slightly smaller gas giants, each about 10 million years old.https://astronomy.com/news/2017/07/rogue-binary-planets
12/16/2020 8:00 AMCherry tomatoes planted in an Israeli desert this coming spring will have three main ingredients to help them grow: soil, water, and sensors communicating with a new kind of antenna carried by a tiny orbiting satellite.https://www.timesofisrael.com/spotlight/israels-mini-satellite-startup-offers-big-coverage-at-low-cost/
12/16/2020 10:00 AMThe European Space Agency is planning to launch a massive claw designed to pluck large pieces of space junk out of the sky and steer them towards the Earth’s atmosphere to be burned up. The agency recently signed a $103 million contract with a Swiss start-up called ClearSpace SA to launch the first version of the system, which is intended to remove a piece of space debris from orbit in what the scientists behind the effort say will be a world’s first.https://futurism.com/the-byte/european-space-agency-claw-space-junk
12/16/2020 12:00 PMOcean vertical structures are changing as a result of global warming. Whether these changes are in pace with the ocean circulation is unknown. Now, an international team of scientists from the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology (SCSIO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, Georgia Institute of Technology, U.S., and GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany, gave an answer to the question.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-stable-ocean-circulation-north-atlantic.html
12/16/2020 2:00 PMWhen it comes to water and Mars, there’s good news and not-so-good news. The good news: there’s water on Mars! The not-so-good news? There’s water on Mars.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-tech-oxygen-fuel-mars-salty.html
12/16/2020 4:00 PMAmazonian rock art newly discovered by researchers provides further proof the rainforest’s earliest inhabitants lived alongside now-extinct giant Ice Age animals.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-newly-amazon-art-rainforest-earliest.html
12/16/2020 6:00 PMScientists have broken the rules of enzyme engineering to unlock a new method for creating chemical reactions that could unlock a wide range of new applications—from creating new drugs to food production.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-chemistry-reaction.html
12/17/2020 8:00 AMBlack holes are regions of infinite density, known as a singularity. And according to mainstream physics, each of these cosmic matter munchers is fringed by an event horizon –- a boundary where once you fall in, you never come out. But what if some black holes are naked — completely lacking such frontiers? As far as we can tell, singularities are always wrapped in event horizons, but a more detailed look at the math of general relativity suggests that doesn’t have to be the case.https://www.space.com/do-naked-singularities-exist
12/17/2020 10:00 AMYou can’t see it. You can’t feel it. But the substance scientists refer to as dark matter could account for five times as much “stuff” in the universe as the regular matter that forms everything from trees, trains and the air you breathe, to stars, planets and interstellar dust clouds.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-dark-fountain-wellspring.html
12/17/2020 12:00 PMCancer cells spread by switching on and off abilities to sense their surroundings, move, hide and grow new tumors, a new study has found.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-cancer-cells-blindfold.html
12/17/2020 2:00 PMAlmost exactly one year ago, the world met Hua Hua and Zhong Zhong, the first primates cloned through a technique that could theoretically produce an unlimited number of replicas. Now, a team of Chinese scientists has used the same technique to produce five clones of another monkey, one genetically altered to have a disorder with an array of traumatic psychological side effects — and the research is a horrifying ethical minefield.https://futurism.com/the-byte/cloned-monkeys-gene-edited-chinese
12/17/2020 4:00 PMGeoscientists have long known that some parts of the continents formed in the Earth’s deep past, but the speed in which land rose above global seas—and the exact shapes that land masses formed—have so far eluded experts. But now, through analyzing roughly 600,000 mineral analyses from a database of about 7,700 different rock samples, a team led by Jesse Reimink, assistant professor of geosciences at Penn State, thinks they’re getting closer to the answers.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-geoscientists-zircon-earth-continents.html
12/17/2020 6:00 PMResearchers at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, have investigated more than 1000 planetary systems orbiting stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and have discovered a series of connections between planetary orbits, number of planets, occurrence and the distance to their stars. It turns out that our own solar system in some ways is very rare, and in others very ordinary.https://phys.org/news/2020-11-solar-galactic-standardbut-rare.html
12/18/2020 8:00 AMAstronomers have spotted the smallest “rogue planet” candidate yet known, a world possibly smaller than Earth that apparently cruises through our Milky Way galaxy unattached to a star.https://www.space.com/smallest-rogue-planet-discovery
12/18/2020 10:00 AMThe setup of lasers and mirrors effectively “solved” a problem far too complicated for even the largest traditional computer system.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/light-based-quantum-computer-exceeds-fastest-classical-supercomputers/
12/18/2020 12:00 PMA team of French researchers has just conducted the most accurate measurement to date of the fine-structure constant, which characterizes the strength of interaction between light and charged elementary particles, such as electrons.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-fundamental-physical-constant.html
12/18/2020 2:00 PMChina has achieved a major breakthrough in quantum computing, performing a calculation that would take a modern-day supercomputer billions of years to complete. The milestone, known as quantum supremacy, comes just over a year after Google became the first in the world to achieve the same feat.https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/quantum-computing-china-us-b1766133.html
12/18/2020 4:00 PMChina successfully powered up its “artificial sun” nuclear fusion reactor for the first time, state media reported Friday, marking a great advance in the country’s nuclear power research capabilities.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-china-nuclear-powered-artificial-sun.html
12/18/2020 6:00 PMAstronomers were hit with a huge wave of data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia space observatory. Those researchers can now explore the best-yet map of the Milky Way, with detailed information on the positions, distances and motion of 1.8 billion cosmic objects, to help us better understand our place in the universe.https://www.space.com/gaia-data-release-best-milky-way-galaxy-map-yet
12/19/2020 8:00 AMGraphene, an atomically thin carbon layer through which electrons can travel virtually unimpeded, has been extensively studied since its first successful isolation more than 15 years ago. Among its many unique properties is the ability to support highly confined electromagnetic waves coupled to oscillations of electronic charge—plasmon polaritons—that have potentially broad applications in nanotechnology, including biosensing, quantum information, and solar energy.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-platform-hybrid-light-matter-highly-graphene.html
12/19/2020 10:00 AMBelow the ice-covered surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus hides a vast ocean. This sprawling ocean is likely 1 billion years old, which means it’s the perfect age to harbor life, said Marc Neveu, a research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.https://www.space.com/enceladus-billion-year-old-ocean.html
12/19/2020 12:00 PMLast month was the hottest November on record as Europe basked in its highest Autumn temperatures in history, the European Union’s satellite monitoring service said Monday. The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) analysis of surface and air temperatures found that November 2020 was 0.8C warmer than the 30-year average of 1981-2010—more than 0.1C hotter than the previous record.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-month-hottest-november-eu.html
12/19/2020 2:00 PMA team in Paris has made the most precise measurement yet of the fine-structure constant, killing hopes for a new force of nature.https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-measure-the-magic-fine-structure-constant-20201202/
12/19/2020 4:00 PMThe cosmos may be studded with black holes so tiny they could slip in between atoms, a wild new theory suggests. And we could be making these teensy singularities all the time at the world’s largest atom smasher, a new study shows. If we could make these objects, they could be a window into the mysterious nature of gravity.https://www.space.com/atom-smasher-could-seed-tiny-black-holes
12/19/2020 6:00 PMMost insects can fly. Yet scores of species have lost that extraordinary ability, particularly on islands.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-charles-darwin-insects-ability.html
12/20/2020 8:00 AMIn a high-stakes mission that could take five years to complete, NASA wants to land astronauts on Mars in the 2030s. Transporting enough oxygen and fuel on a spacecraft to sustain the mission for anywhere near that length of time, however, isn’t currently viable.https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/08/world/mars-water-fuel-how-to-get-scn/index.html
12/20/2020 10:00 AMThe Standard Model, the most exhaustive existing theory outlining fundamental particle interactions, predicts the existence of what are known as triboson interactions. These interactions are processes in which three-gauge bosons are simultaneously produced from one Large Hadron Collider event.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-triple-threat-massive-gauge-bosons.html
12/20/2020 12:00 PMFor the first time in history manmade materials now likely outweigh all life on Earth, scientists said Wednesday in research detailing the “crossover point” at which humanity’s footprint is heavier than that of the natural world. The weight of roads, buildings and other constructed or manufactured materials is doubling roughly every 20 years, and authors of the research said it currently weighed 1.1 teratonnes (1.1 trillion tonnes).https://phys.org/news/2020-12-manmade-mass-outweighs-life-earth.html
12/20/2020 2:00 PMU.S. fusion scientists, notorious for squabbling over which projects to fund with their field’s limited budget, have coalesced around an audacious goal. A 10-year plan presented last week to the federal Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee is the first since the community tried to formulate such a road map in 2014 and failed spectacularly. It calls for the Department of Energy (DOE), the main sponsor of U.S. fusion research, to prepare to build a prototype power plant in the 2040s that would produce carbon-free electricity by harnessing the nuclear process that powers the Sun.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/us-physicists-rally-around-ambitious-plan-build-fusion-power-plant
12/20/2020 4:00 PMA new study at the University of Chicago has shown that elaborate protein structures accumulate over deep time even when they serve no purpose, because a universal biochemical property and the genetic code force natural selection to preserve them.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-simple-evolution-useless-complexity.html
12/20/2020 6:00 PMCharles Darwin’s landmark opus “On the Origin of the Species” ends with a beautiful summary of his theory of evolution: “There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” In fact, scientists now know that most species that have ever existed are extinct.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-artificial-intelligence-patterns-earth-biological.html
12/21/2020 8:00 AMA team of researchers from the NYU Abu Dhabi’s (NYUAD) Smart Materials Lab (SML) led by Professor of Chemistry Panče Naumov has conducted a thorough review of the scientific literature surrounding the natural production of light, called bioluminescence, and developed conclusions that will help others in the field direct their research to uncover the mysteries behind this fascinating natural phenomenon.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-mysteries-emission-fireflies.html
12/21/2020 10:00 AMA planet in an unlikely orbit around a double star 336 light-years away may offer a clue to a mystery much closer to home: A hypothesized, distant body in our solar system dubbed “Planet Nine.” This is the first time that astronomers have been able to measure the motion of a massive Jupiter-like planet that is orbiting very far away from its host stars and visible debris disk. This disk is similar to our Kuiper Belt of small, icy bodies beyond Neptune. In our own solar system, the suspected Planet Nine would also lie far outside of the Kuiper Belt on a similarly strange orbit. Though the search for a Planet Nine continues, this exoplanet discovery is evidence that such oddball orbits are possible.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-hubble-pins-weird-exoplanet-far-flung.html
12/21/2020 12:00 PMThe China National Space Administration’s Chang’e-5 mission, set to return Moon rocks to Earth next week, has grabbed headlines around the world. But China’s other space agency, the science-focused National Space Science Center (NSSC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), is making news of its own: Just after 4 a.m. local time today it launched its Gravitational Wave High-energy Electromagnetic Counterpart All-sky Monitor (GECAM) from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/china-launches-gamma-ray-hunting-satellites-trace-sources-gravitational-waves
12/21/2020 2:00 PMA new technology, called Artificial Chemist 2.0, allows users to go from requesting a custom quantum dot to completing the relevant R&D and beginning manufacturing in less than an hour. The tech is completely autonomous, and uses artificial intelligence (AI) and automated robotic systems to perform multi-step chemical synthesis and analysis.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-artificial-chemist-quantum-dot-hour.html
12/21/2020 4:00 PMA team of researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences working with the Beijing Zoo, has found a possible explanation for horse manure rolling (HMR) by giant pandas. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group outlines their decade-long study of the odd behavior by the pandas and what they found.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-giant-pandas-horse-manure.html
12/21/2020 6:00 PMIn groundbreaking new research, an international team of researchers led by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities has developed a unique process for producing a quantum state that is part light and part matter.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-unique-light-matter-mixture.html
12/22/2020 8:00 AMEmbrace the flow, says a duo of mechanical engineers at North Carolina State University—the flow of energy, that is. The mantra you might normally hear from your yoga instructor could be an entirely new way of looking at the universe. The two theorists, Larry Silverberg and Jeffrey Eischen, suggest that fragments of energy, rather than waves or particles, may be the fundamental building blocks of the universe. The bedrock of their theory is the foundational idea that energy is always flowing through space and time. The authors suggest thinking of energy as lines that enter and exit a region of space, never crossing each other, and with no beginning or end point.https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a34934990/new-universe-theory-fragments-energy/
12/22/2020 10:00 AMRather than springing up from the sea, the first biological cells may have formed on land, Nature reports. Water is essential to life, but it also breaks apart molecules like DNA and proteins, a paradox that has long puzzled scientists. Although chemists have created key components of cells by hitting chemical-based chemicals with ultraviolet (UV) radiation and subjecting them to dry and wet cycles, they have been unable to produce the same effects in seawaterlike conditions. Instead, researchers propose, life may have formed on bodies of water on land—perhaps formed by craters, like the Manicouagan Reservoir (above)—where there was intermittent availability of water as well as enough UV radiation from sunlight.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/scientists-are-rethinking-where-life-originated-earth
12/22/2020 12:00 PMOptics researchers from The University of Queensland and Nokia Bell Labs in the US have developed a new technique to demonstrate the time reversal of optical waves, which could transform the fields of advanced biomedical imaging and telecommunications. Time reversal of waves in physics doesn’t mean traveling back to the future; it describes a special type of wave which can retrace a path backwards through an object, as if watching a movie of the traveling wave, played in reverse.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-physicists-time-reversed-optical.html
12/22/2020 2:00 PMResearchers from The Institute for Integrative Systems Biology have discovered a new gene family of antimicrobial peptides (small proteins) –the Blattellicins– in a German cockroach (Blattella germanica). The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, may help to understand how these insects can live in unsanitary environments and defend themselves against the fungal and bacterial pathogens they encounter via the beneficial symbiotic organisms that they harbor.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-gene-family-antimicrobial-proteins-german.html
12/22/2020 4:00 PMThe fossil of a chicken-sized, meat eater from Brazil that had a mane of fluffy filaments and a pair of stiff, ribbon-like streamers emerging from both shoulders is the first dinosaur with feathers ever discovered in the Southern Hemisphere.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dinosaur-fuzz-rods-feathers-first-southern-hemisphere
12/22/2020 6:00 PMThough it sounds like something straight out of science fiction, controlling the speed of light has in fact been a long-standing challenge for physicists. In a study recently published in Communications Physics, researchers from Osaka University generated light bullets with highly controllable velocities.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-bullets.html
12/23/2020 8:00 AMA study by the University of Southampton gives a new perspective on why our planet has managed to stay habitable for billions of years—concluding it is almost certainly due, at least in part, to luck. The research suggests this may shorten the odds of finding life on so-called ‘twin-Earths’ in the Universe.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-chance-major-role-earth-life.html
12/23/2020 10:00 AMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=saved&v=2578658729100128
12/23/2020 12:00 PMIf you stargaze on a clear winter night, it’s hard to miss the constellation Orion the Hunter, with his shield in one arm and the other arm stretched high to the heavens. A bright red dot called Betelgeuse marks Orion’s shoulder, and this star’s strange dimming has captivated skygazers for thousands of years. Aboriginal Australians may have even worked it into their oral histories.https://astronomy.com/news/2020/02/when-betelgeuse-goes-supernova-what-will-it-look-like-from-earth
12/23/2020 2:00 PMThe world’s largest iceberg, A-68a, may be mere days away from crashing into the Antarctic wildlife refuge of South Georgia island, and researchers are already preparing for the aftermath. According to the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), which has tracked the iceberg for months, two refrigerator-sized robots will soon ship out for South Georgia to study the underwater effects of the impending collision.https://www.livescience.com/iceberg-a68a-collision-robots.html
12/23/2020 4:00 PMA team of Cornell University scientists has found what they believe to be the first radio signature emitted by a planet outside of our solar system. Knowing what that sounds like, let’s be clear: It’s probably not aliens. However, according to research slated for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, picking up on radio signatures from an exoplanet is a valuable tool for scientists who want to know whether that world could potentially support life.https://futurism.com/the-byte/cornell-radio-signal-exoplanet
12/23/2020 6:00 PMA hypothetical particle known as the ultralight boson could be responsible for our universe’s dark matter. While the ultralight boson isn’t directlyobservable, it might clump up around black holes, triggering an exotic mechanism that causes it to explode — in a massive burst of gravitational waves. Even better: these gravitational waves may be detectable with the next generation of detectors.https://www.space.com/new-particle-dark-matter-candidate
12/24/2020 8:00 AMIf you thought your morning hike was contributing to your wellbeing, a new study shows that you’re right, especially if our avian friends were singing while you strolled. A growing body of research shows that time spent in nature contributes to human mental health. Although many studies have found that humans benefit from spending time in nature, few studies have explored why. A research team at California Polytechnic State University investigated how much the natural sounds humans hear during their time in the great outdoors contribute to this sense of well-being.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-phantom-chorus-birdsong-boosts-human.html
12/24/2020 10:00 AMAn international group of scientists, including Case Western Reserve University Astronomy Chair Stacy McGaugh, has published research contending that a rival idea to the popular dark matter hypothesis more accurately predicts a galactic phenomenon that appears to defy the classic rules of gravity.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-unique-gravity-dark-theory.html
12/24/2020 12:00 PMIn a remote galaxy, two neutron stars circled one another in a ballet of ultimate destruction and inevitable creation. Both objects were the remnants of massive stars, probably from a binary system, that had become supernovae long before. Each was incredibly massive, with neutrons so closely packed that their cores became diamond. The dance, alas, could not go on forever and the stars collided, releasing unimaginable energy and sending gravitational waves speeding through the fabric of space-time.https://astronomy.com/magazine/news/2020/11/does-all-the-gold-in-the-universe-come-from-stars
12/24/2020 2:00 PMBetween your ears lies a miracle of nature, with more connections than our galaxy has stars. In the past, the idea of mapping the connectome—or the interconnected neuronal pathways of the brain (the white matter), was thought impossible. Now, a group of scientists are planning to do just that. How? They plan on using an oncoming supercomputer with tremendous power. Should they be successful, it could stand as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science. And that’s just one of the project’s scientists at Argonne National Laboratory are planning, with Aurora 21 (A21).https://bigthink.com/philip-perry/supercomputer-aurora-21-will-map-the-human-brain-starting-in-2021
12/24/2020 4:00 PMSuper-fast quantum computers and communication devices could revolutionize countless aspects of our lives—but first, researchers need a fast, efficient source of the entangled pairs of photons such systems use to transmit and manipulate information. Researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology have done just that, not only creating a chip-based photon source 100 times more efficient that previously possible, but bringing massive quantum device integration within reach.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-entangled-photons-efficiently-previously.html
12/24/2020 6:00 PMTumors are hogs, gobbling nutrients to fuel their runaway growth, and for decades researchers have tried to develop drugs that cut off their food supply. A study out today shows that an updated version of a failed cancer drug can not only prevent tumor cells from using an essential nutrient, but also spur immune cells to attack the growths.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/11/revamped-cancer-drug-starves-tumors-mice
12/25/2020 8:00 AMEven though it has been widely known that wearing a face mask will help mitigate the community spread of COVID-19, less is known regarding the specific effectiveness of masks in reducing the viral load in the respiratory tracts of those wearing them.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-mask-masks-affect-airflow-effectiveness.html
12/25/2020 10:00 AMWhile particle theories are currently the most favored explanations for dark mater, physicists have still been unable to detect dark matter particles in ways that would confirm or contradict these theories. Some theorists have thus been exploring new theories of gravity that clearly account for and explain the existence of this elusive type of matter. In order to obviate the need for dark matter, however, these theories should be aligned with cosmological observations gathered so far.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-constraints-alternative-gravity-theories-dark.html
12/25/2020 12:00 PMEvery last particle in the universe—from a cosmic ray to a quark—is either a fermion or a boson. These categories divide the building blocks of nature into two distinct kingdoms. Now researchers have discovered the first examples of a third particle kingdom. Anyons, as they’re known, don’t behave like either fermions or bosons; instead, their behavior is somewhere in the middle.https://www.wired.com/story/milestone-evidence-for-anyons-a-third-kingdom-of-particles/
12/25/2020 2:00 PMFor the first time, astronomers have discovered evidence for a giant planet orbiting a tiny, dead white dwarf star. And, surprisingly, the Neptune-sized planet is more than four times the diameter of the Earth-sized star it orbits.https://astronomy.com/news/2019/12/first-giant-planet-discovered-around-a-tiny-white-dwarf-star
12/25/2020 4:00 PMWhen a lightning bolt strikes a mountaintop, it can melt rocks in a flash, leaving a narrow glassy scar called a fulgurite. Now, researchers have shown that these fossilized thunderbolts are geological clocks that record the passage of time. The technique offers geologists a way to date thunderstorms from tens of thousands of years ago, and could give them a window into ancient climate patterns.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/fossilized-lightning-bolts-reveal-when-ancient-storms-struck
12/25/2020 6:00 PMIn a major breakthrough for the quest toward quantum internet, a technology that would revolutionize computing in myriad ways, a consortium of well-regarded institutions have announced the first demonstration of sustained, high-fidelity quantum teleportation over long distances.https://www.vice.com/en/article/93wqep/researchers-have-achieved-sustained-long-distance-quantum-teleportation
12/26/2020 8:00 AMhttps://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/51/eabd5354
12/26/2020 10:00 AMIn average penguin years, Wellington the Rockhopper penguin has lived nearly two lifetimes. The Rockhopper penguin, who has called Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium home since 1991, recently turned 33.https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/12/19/penguin-wellington-chicago-shedd-aquarium-33-birthday/3958214001/
12/26/2020 12:00 PMLengthened to the size of a tennis court, the five-layer sunshield of NASA’s fully assembled James Webb Space Telescope successfully completed a final series of large-scale deployment and tensioning tests. This milestone puts the observatory one step closer to its launch in 2021.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-nasa-webb-sunshield-successfully-unfolds.html
12/26/2020 2:00 PMStrange radio transmissions appear to be coming from our nearest star system; now scientists are trying to work out what is sending them.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alien-hunters-discover-mysterious-signal-from-proxima-centauri/
12/26/2020 4:00 PMClays in a 44-millimeter-wide Aguas Zarcas fragment may hold amino acids, along with stardust that predates the Sun.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/unusual-meteorite-more-valuable-gold-may-hold-building-blocks-life
12/26/2020 6:00 PMA photograph thought to be the longest exposure image ever taken has been discovered inside a beer can at the University of Hertfordshire’s Bayfordbury Observatory. The image was taken by Regina Valkenborgh, who began capturing it towards the end of her MA Fine Art degree at the University of Hertfordshire in 2012. It shows 2,953 arced trails of the sun, as it rose and fell between summer and winter over a period of eight years and one month. The dome of Bayfordbury’s oldest telescope is visible to the left of the photograph and the atmospheric gantry, built halfway through the exposure, can be seen from the center to the right. Regina was interested in capturing images without the use of modern technology; in this case using a beer can lined with photographic paper as a pinhole camera.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-longest-exposure-captured-beer.html
12/27/2020 8:00 AMA prototype jet engine can propel itself without using any fossil fuels, potentially paving the way for carbon-neutral air travel. The device compresses air and ionizes it with microwaves, generating plasma that thrusts it forward. That means planes may someday fly using just electricity and the air around them as fuel.https://futurism.com/the-byte/jet-engine-powered-electricity
12/27/2020 10:00 AMArtificial intelligence (AI) has solved one of biology’s grand challenges: predicting how proteins curl up from a linear chain of amino acids into 3D shapes that allow them to carry out life’s tasks. Today, leading structural biologists and organizers of a biennial protein-folding competition announced the achievement by researchers at DeepMind, a U.K.-based AI company. They say the DeepMind method will have far-reaching effects, among them dramatically speeding the creation of new medications.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/game-has-changed-ai-triumphs-solving-protein-structures
12/27/2020 12:00 PMA study of more than 1,400 protein-coding genes of fleas has resolved one of the longest standing mysteries in the evolution of insects, reordering their placement in the tree of life and pinpointing who their closest relatives are.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-position-fleas-tree-life.html
12/27/2020 2:00 PMA breakthrough in the design of lithium ion batteries could lead to the next generation of safer more reliable solid-state power cells. Li ion batteries are used all over the world to power everyday technologies including electric cars, power tools, mobile phones and laptops.https://techxplore.com/news/2020-12-li-ion-batteries.html
12/27/2020 4:00 PMIn the aftermath of megafires that devastated forests of the western United States, attention turns to whether forests will regenerate on their own or not. Forest managers can now look to a newly enhanced, predictive mapping tool to learn where forests are likely to regenerate on their own and where replanting efforts may be beneficial.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-reforest-wildfire.html
12/27/2020 6:00 PMIn a new study of tidal marsh resilience to sea level rise, geologist and first author Brian Yellen at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and colleagues observed that Hudson River Estuary marshes are growing upward at a rate two to three times faster than sea level rise, “suggesting that they should be resilient to accelerated sea level rise in the future,” he says.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-hudson-river-tidal-marshes-accidentally.html
12/28/2020 8:00 AMPlants have the same variation in body clocks as that found in humans, according to new research that explores the genes governing circadian rhythms in plants.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-larks-night-owls.html
12/28/2020 10:00 AMA skyrmion can be described as a swirling quasi-particle, a knot of twisting field lines, or a subatomic hurricane. They’re also one of the most difficult physics concepts for humans to understand. That’s because these nano-size disturbances are easiest to describe mathematically and, despite being known about for nearly 60 years, physicists have only recently started to find practical applications for skyrmions.https://www.space.com/skyrmions.html
12/28/2020 12:00 PMIf a giant object looks like it’s going to slam into Earth, humanity has a few options: Hammer it with a spacecraft hard enough to knock it off course, blast it with nuclear weapons, tug on it with a gravity tractor, or even slow it down using concentrated sunlight.https://www.space.com/how-to-stop-asteroid-from-hitting-earth.html
12/28/2020 2:00 PMNASA is moving ahead with work on a pair of Mars sample return missions, although some in the planetary science community worry how the cost of that effort will affect other projects.https://spacenews.com/nasa-moves-mars-sample-return-program-into-next-phase-of-development/
12/28/2020 4:00 PMAstronomers have peered out into the vast expanse and spotted what they think is the farthest (and oldest) galaxy ever observed. The galaxy GN-z11 might not have a flashy name, but it appears to be the most distant and oldest galaxy ever detected, scientists have found. Astronomers led by Nobunari Kashikawa, a professor in the department of astronomy at the University of Tokyo, embarked on a mission to find the universe’s most distant observable galaxy, to learn more about how it formed and when.https://www.space.com/oldest-most-distant-galaxy-discovery
12/28/2020 6:00 PMHere we are, 4.5 billion years into the lifetime of our sun, with an array of planets and smaller objects orbiting around it. How did all the planets form, and why did they end up in the orbits that they did? The formation of the solar system is a challenging puzzle for modern astronomy and a terrific tale of extreme forces operating over immense timescales.https://www.space.com/how-did-solar-system-form
12/29/2020 8:00 AMhttps://futurism.com/seti-institute-mysterious-signal-proxima-centauri
12/29/2020 10:00 AM
12/29/2020 12:00 PM
12/29/2020 2:00 PM
12/29/2020 4:00 PM
12/29/2020 6:00 PM
12/30/2020 8:00 AMAstronomers simulated what humans will see on Earth when the star Betelgeuse explodes as a supernova sometime in the next 100,000 years.https://astronomy.com/news/2020/02/when-betelgeuse-goes-supernova-what-will-it-look-like-from-earth
12/30/2020 10:00 AMA team of scientists at Freie Universität Berlin has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) method for calculating the ground state of the Schrödinger equation in quantum chemistry. The goal of quantum chemistry is to predict chemical and physical properties of molecules based solely on the arrangement of their atoms in space, avoiding the need for resource-intensive and time-consuming laboratory experiments. In principle, this can be achieved by solving the Schrödinger equation, but in practice this is extremely difficult.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-artificial-intelligence-schrdinger-equation.html
12/30/2020 12:00 PMA dark storm on Neptune abruptly switched directions and started moving away from almost certain death, puzzling astronomers.https://www.space.com/neptune-dark-spot-storm-changes-direction
12/30/2020 2:00 PMA team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in the U.K. and one in Saudi Arabia has developed a way to produce jet fuel using carbon dioxide as a main ingredient. In their paper, the group describes their process and its efficiency.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-jet-fuel-carbon-dioxide.html
12/30/2020 4:00 PMThey resemble small fragments of charcoal, but the soil samples collected from an asteroid and returned to Earth by a Japanese spacecraft were hardly disappointing.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-japanese-spacecraft-gifts-asteroid-chips.html
12/30/2020 6:00 PMThe Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR), a superconducting fusion device also known as the Korean artificial sun, set the new world record as it succeeded in maintaining the high temperature plasma for 20 seconds with an ion temperature over 100 million degrees (Celsius).https://phys.org/news/2020-12-korean-artificial-sun-world-sec-long.html
12/31/2020 8:00 AMhttps://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2020/01/can-solar-systems-exist-in-a-binary-star-system
12/31/2020 10:00 AMLight travels at a speed of about 300,000,000 meters per second as light particles, photons, or equivalently as electromagnetic field waves. Experiments led by Hrvoje Petek, an R.K. Mellon professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy examined ideas surrounding the origins of light, taking snapshots of light, stopping light and using it to change properties of matter.https://phys.org/news/2020-12-snapshots-properties.html
12/31/2020 12:00 PMBlack holes are some of the strangest and most fascinating objects in outer space. They’re extremely dense, with such strong gravitational attraction that even light cannot escape their grasp if it comes near enough.https://www.space.com/15421-black-holes-facts-formation-discovery-sdcmp.html
12/31/2020 2:00 PMFulfilling a decades-old quest, this week researchers report creating the first superconductor that does not have to be cooled for its electrical resistance to vanish. There’s a catch: The new room temperature superconductor only works at a pressure equivalent to about three-quarters of that at the center of Earth. But if researchers can stabilize the material at ambient pressure, dreamed-of applications of superconductivity could be within reach, such as low-loss power lines and ultrapowerful superconducting magnets that don’t need refrigeration, for MRI machines and maglev trains.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/after-decades-room-temperature-superconductivity-achieved
12/31/2020 4:00 PMhttps://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2020/09/how-do-spacecraft-communicate-from-the-farside-of-the-moon
12/31/2020 6:00 PMA generation after a NASA spacecraft’s probe found an unexpectedly hot and dense atmosphere at Jupiter, a newer agency mission may have some answers to the puzzle.https://www.space.com/juno-jupiter-hot-spot-mystery