Science! (3 Viewers)

[bonnjer]

For the First Time Ever, Scientists Witnessed a Black Hole Waking Up

Scientists observed a distant galaxy's dramatic brightening, which suggests a black hole waking up and offering new cosmic insights.

www.yahoo.com

 

[Sailorsaint]

Astronauts stranded in space due to multiple issues with Boeing's Starliner — and the window for a return flight is closing

NASA and Boeing engineers are troubleshooting various faults in the Starliner spacecraft. But with only 45 days of docking time available, the window for return is closing.

www.livescience.com

 

[Eeyore]

Astronauts stranded in space due to multiple issues with Boeing's Starliner — and the window for a return flight is closing

NASA and Boeing engineers are troubleshooting various faults in the Starliner spacecraft. But with only 45 days of docking time available, the window for return is closing.

www.livescience.com

They privatized parts of the space program with no accountability. Now we're finding out what could go wrong.

 

[Optimus Prime]

It may seem fanciful, but as darkness approached – and with it a vanishingly rare lunar event – it felt as if the beasts and the birds of Stonehenge sensed something strange was afoot.

The song of the skylarks and the flight of the starlings seemed particularly energetic; hares, animals that have mythical associations with the moon, loped with apparent purpose around the stone circle; the humans who had gathered at the monument became skittish.

Stonehenge is, of course, closely linked with the rising and setting of the sun but there is also a growing body of thought that the ancient people who built the circle were also fascinated by the moon – and conscious of a phenomenon now taking place called a “major lunar standstill”, something that only happens every 18.6 years.


This weekend, archaeologists, astronomers and archaeoastronomers (who study how prehistoric people responded to the sky) arrived at the time of the full moon to explore the theory that the Stonehenge creators may have set up some stones to mark the lunar standstill, when moonrise and moonset are farthest apart along the horizon.

“It’s very exciting,” said Clive Ruggles, an emeritus professor of archaeoastronomy at the University of Leicester. “This is a special night because the moon is passing at its lowest possible path through the sky and also it’s full while it’s doing it so it’s the two things together.”…….

How a lunar ‘standstill’ is shining new light on Stonehenge

Experts say some of structure’s stones may have been set to mark an event that only happens every 18.6 years

www.theguardian.com

 

[fred8615]

Astronomers think they’ve figured out how and when Jupiter’s Red Spot formed

Astronomers concluded it is not the same and that Cassini's spot disappeared in 1708.

arstechnica.com

 

[longtime lurker]

Asteroid 'the size of Mount Everest' to skim past Earth tomorrow

A mountain-sized ‘planet killer’ asteroid will fly past Earth on Thursday, quickly followed by another that was only spotted a few weeks ago

metro.co.uk

 

[Optimus Prime]

From bad backs to eye strain, office work can take its toll on the body.

But it seems such perils are nothing new: researchers have found Egyptian scribes experienced damage to their hips, jaws and thumbs as a result of their efforts.

Experts studying the remains of scribes buried in the necropolis at Abusir, Egypt, between 2700 and 2180BC say that, compared with men who undertook other work, the administrators showed signs of degenerative joint changes.


“Our study should provide an answer to the question of what occupational risk factors were associated with the ‘profession’ of scribe in ancient Egypt,” said Petra Brukner Havelková, the first author of the study, at the National Museum in Prague. She added the work could also help with the identification of scribes among skeletons of individuals whose titles or profession were not known.

In the journal Scientific Reports, the team told how they analysed the remains of 69 adult males from Abusir dating to the third millennium BC, 30 of whom were known to have been scribes.

With only 1% of the population able to read and write, such men had an elevated social status and undertook crucial administrative work. Veronika Dulíková, a co-author of the study from Charles University in Prague, said scribes had been known to start working as teenagers in a professional career that may have lasted decades.

However, it seems the job might have taken a toll. While the team found small differences in the prevalence of certain skeletal traits between scribes and non-scribes, suggesting the two groups were very similar, scribes almost always had a higher incidence of certain changes.…….

Egyptian scribes suffered work-related injuries, study says

Higher incidence of damage to hips, jaws and thumbs reveals their writing efforts may have taken a toll

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

The last woolly mammoths on Earth took their final stand on a remote Arctic island about 4,000 years ago, but the question of what sealed their fate has remained a mystery. Now a genetic analysis suggests that a freak event such as an extreme storm or a plague was to blame.

The findings counter a previous theory that harmful genetic mutations caused by inbreeding led to a “genomic meltdown” in the isolated population. The latest analysis confirms that although the group had low genetic diversity, a stable population of a few hundred mammoths had occupied the island for thousands of years before suddenly vanishing.

“We can now confidently reject the idea that the population was simply too small and that they were doomed to go extinct for genetic reasons,” said Prof Love Dalén, an evolutionary geneticist at the Centre for Palaeogenetics, run jointly by the Swedish Museum of Natural History and Stockholm University. “This means it was probably just some random event that killed them off, and if that random event hadn’t happened then we would still have mammoths today.”……

Freak event probably killed last woolly mammoths, scientists say

Study shows population on Arctic island was stable until sudden demise, countering theory of ‘genomic meltdown’

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

Robot face with living skin can smile ‘like a human’

Scientists now hope to add features like wrinkles and sweat glands

www.independent.co.uk

 

[Optimus Prime]

While Matt Damon relied on potatoes cultivated in crew biowaste to survive in the hit film The Martian, researchers say it is a humble desert moss that might prove pivotal to establishing life on Mars.

Scientists in China say they have found Syntrichiacaninervis – a moss found in regions including Antarctica and the Mojave desert – is able to withstand Mars-like conditions, including drought, high levels of radiation and extreme cold.

The team say their work is the first to look the survival of whole plants in such an environment, while it also focuses on the potential for growing plants on the planet’s surface, rather than in greenhouses.

“The unique insights obtained in our study lay the foundation for outer space colonisation using naturally selected plants adapted to extreme stress conditions,” the team write.

Prof Stuart McDaniel, an expert on moss at the University of Florida and who was not involved in the study, suggested the idea had merits.

“Cultivating terrestrial plants is an important part of any long-term space mission because plants efficiently turn carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and carbohydrates – essentially the air and food that humans need to survive. Desert moss is not edible, but it could provide other important services in space,” he said.…..

Scientists find desert moss ‘that can survive on Mars’

Moss that grows in Mojave desert and Antarctica may help establish life on the red planet, researchers say

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

It sounds like a scene from a Spielberg film: an injured worker undergoes an emergency amputation, performed by one of her colleagues, allowing her to live another day. But this is not a human story – it is behaviour seen in ants.

While it is not the first time wound care has been seen in ants, scientists say their discovery is the first example of a non-human animal carrying out life-saving amputations, with the operation performed to treat leg wounds and prevent the onset or spread of infection.

And surprisingly, the insects appear to tailor the treatment they give to the location of injury.. “The ants are able to diagnose, to some extent, the wounds and treat them accordingly to maximise the survival of the injured,” said Dr Erik Frank, from the University of Lausanne and the first author of the research.

Writing in the journal Current Biology, Frank and colleagues report how they cut Florida carpenter ants (Camponotus floridanus) on their right hind limb, then observed the responses of their nest mates for a week.

The results revealed that 13 of 17 ants with injuries on their femur or thigh underwent amputation by their nest mates, with their limb severed at the trochanter – the joint with the hip bone.

“Nest mates would begin licking the wound before moving up the injured limb with their mouthparts until they reached the trochanter. The nest mates then proceeded to repeatedly bite the injured leg until it was cut off,” the team wrote.……

Ants can carry out life-saving amputations on injured nest mates, study shows

Research on carpenter ants provides first example of a non-human animal severing limbs to curb infections

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

Scientists have spotted mysterious, incredibly bright objects in the distant universe.

New research confirms that there are luminous red objects in the early cosmos – and that they cannot be explained by our understanding of how galaxies and black hole are born,

Researchers spotted three of the mysterious objects. Their light came to us from when the universe was only 600-800 million years old, about 5 per cent of its current age.…..

Scientists spot unexplained ‘tiny bright objects’ in the distant universe

Lights are not explained by current theories of galaxy growth or black holes

www.independent.co.uk

 

[Optimus Prime]

Scientists in China have built a robot capable of performing critical tasks using an artificial brain grown from human stem cells.

The brain-on-chip was able to learn basic tasks, such as moving its limbs, avoiding obstacles and grasping objects, according to the researchers, while exhibiting some intelligence functions of a biological brain.

A team from Tianjin University and the Southern University of Science and Technology fitted the lab-grown brain with a brain-computer interface that allowed it to communicate with the outside world.

“The brain-computer interface on a chip is a technology that uses an in vitro cultured ‘brain’ – such as brain organoids – coupled with an electrode chip to achieve information interaction with the outside world through encoding and decoding and stimulation-feedback,” said Ming Dong, an executive director at the Haihe Laboratory for Brain-Computer Interaction and Human-Computer Integration at Tianjin University.…..

Robot with human brain tissue learns how to use arms

Brain-on-chip exhibited basic human intelligence, researchers say

www.independent.co.uk

 

[Dago]

New Theory On Why We Are Alone In The Cosmos—Tectonic Plates

A new study suggests plate tectonics are vital for the evolution of advanced lifeforms, affecting the search for extra-terrestrial life in the Milky Way.

www.forbes.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

In what is being called a “once-in-a-lifetime event”, light from a thermonuclear explosion on a star has been travelling towards Earth for thousands of years and it will be here any day.

T Coronae Borealis (also known as T Cor Bor, T CrB, and the Blaze star) will be as bright as the north star (for those in the northern hemisphere).

Dr Laura Driessen, from the University of Sydney’s school of physics, said the Blaze star would be as bright as Orion’s right foot for those in the southern hemisphere.

A recurrent nova, T CrB becomes visible about every 80 years after a thermonuclear explosion on the surface of a white dwarf about 3,000 light years away.

The dwarf sucks up hydrogen from a neighbouring red giant, and that causes a buildup of pressure and heat that eventually triggers the explosion.

Known as a nova (for “new”), it is expected to become visible anytime from now until September.…….

‘Once-in-a-lifetime event’: rare chance to see explosion on dwarf star 3,000 light years away

T Coronae Borealis, or the Blaze star, was last seen in 1946 and will be visible again some time between now and September

www.theguardian.com