Technology has made it easier to fake scientific results. Is a cultural shift required to fix the problem?
Paper retractions and image duplications are a symptom of a much larger problem
Cases of scientific misconduct are on the rise. For every 10,000 papers on PubMed, 2.5 are retracted, with more than half of these retractions attributed to scientific misconduct, which includes mismanagement of data and plagiarism.
“Papers from twenty or thirty years ago were fairly simple – they [had] maybe one or two photos,” says Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist who now works as a scientific integrity consultant. “That’s around the time that I did my PhD. If we wanted to submit papers with photos, we had to make an actual appointment with a photographer! It was very hard to fake anything.”
Tasks like photographing results and constructing academic figures were once specialized, requiring designated experts who had nothing to do with the data collection process. That’s not the case in the 21st century. As technology has advanced, not only has the amount of data increased exponentially, but so has our ability to record and report this data. With more people competing for fewer academic jobs, scientists are constantly under pressure to acquire more data, publish in high impact journals, and secure more external funding.
Unfortunately, with such massive amounts of data, not only is it easier to make mistakes, but it is also easier to manipulate results
One study from Arizona State University found that the mounting professional pressure and the low chances of getting caught are some of the reasons that scientific misconduct is so prevalent. Coupled with availability of image editing tools and the ease of cutting-and-pasting phrases, it is also a lot less challenging to misrepresent findings.
In 2016, Bik and colleagues analyzed over 20,000 papers from 40 biomedical research journals, finding that one in 25 images had evidence of image duplication. 6.1% of papers from the Molecular and Cell Biology journal alone showed signs of inappropriate alterations.
Elisabeth Bik is a microbiologist who now works as a scientific integrity consultant.
By Michel & Co., San Jose, CA, USA
One of the organizations looking for solutions to this growing issue of scientific misconduct is the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI). Founded in 1978, the ILSI is an organization of scientists working in food safety and nutritional science. One of their major aims is to ensure scientific integrity in nutrition-related research, especially since research findings in this field often inform public health policy decisions. To find a solution, ILSI’s North American branch (ILSI North America) co-founded the Scientific Integrity Consortium to evaluate the extent of scientific misconduct, and to broaden the scope of this conversation beyond food science. In 2019, the consortium published their findings, which included guidelines on how to define research misconduct and detrimental research practices, in addition to a comprehensive list of recommendations to tackle the issue.
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https://massivesci.com/articles/scienti ... tractions/
Articles of Interest in Science
Scientists discover 1st animal that doesn't breathe oxygen
Scientists have discovered something they didn't think existed: an animal that can't breathe oxygen, and obviously doesn't need to.
That animal is a parasite called Henneguya salminocola, distantly related to jellyfish. It lives in the muscles of salmon and trout, causing unsightly little white nodules known as "tapioca disease."
The parasite has just 10 cells and is smaller than many of the cells in our bodies, but it has an extraordinary superpower — the ability to live without the machinery to turn oxygen into energy, researchers reported this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"In a way, it changes our view of animals," said senior author Dorothée Huchon, a zoology professor in the Faculty of Life Sciences and the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University, who worked with collaborators in Israel, the U.S. and Canada.
While many microbes have evolved the ability to live without oxygen, animals tend to be much more complex, with many different kinds of cells and tissues combined in one organism.
As far as scientists knew until now, all animals were powered by organelles called mitochondria, which convert sugar and oxygen into energy through a process called respiration, and have their own "mitochondrial" genes.
More...
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/technolo ... ailsignout
Scientists have discovered something they didn't think existed: an animal that can't breathe oxygen, and obviously doesn't need to.
That animal is a parasite called Henneguya salminocola, distantly related to jellyfish. It lives in the muscles of salmon and trout, causing unsightly little white nodules known as "tapioca disease."
The parasite has just 10 cells and is smaller than many of the cells in our bodies, but it has an extraordinary superpower — the ability to live without the machinery to turn oxygen into energy, researchers reported this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"In a way, it changes our view of animals," said senior author Dorothée Huchon, a zoology professor in the Faculty of Life Sciences and the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University, who worked with collaborators in Israel, the U.S. and Canada.
While many microbes have evolved the ability to live without oxygen, animals tend to be much more complex, with many different kinds of cells and tissues combined in one organism.
As far as scientists knew until now, all animals were powered by organelles called mitochondria, which convert sugar and oxygen into energy through a process called respiration, and have their own "mitochondrial" genes.
More...
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/technolo ... ailsignout
Covid-19 Changed How the World Does Science, Together
Never before, scientists say, have so many of the world’s researchers focused so urgently on a single topic. Nearly all other research has ground to a halt.
Using flag-draped memes and military terminology, the Trump administration and its Chinese counterparts have cast coronavirus research as national imperatives, sparking talk of a biotech arms race.
The world’s scientists, for the most part, have responded with a collective eye roll.
“Absolutely ridiculous,” said Jonathan Heeney, a Cambridge University researcher working on a coronavirus vaccine.
“That isn’t how things happen,” said Adrian Hill, the head of the Jenner Institute at Oxford, one of the largest vaccine research centers at an academic institution.
While political leaders have locked their borders, scientists have been shattering theirs, creating a global collaboration unlike any in history. Never before, researchers say, have so many experts in so many countries focused simultaneously on a single topic and with such urgency. Nearly all other research has ground to a halt.
Normal imperatives like academic credit have been set aside. Online repositories make studies available months ahead of journals. Researchers have identified and shared hundreds of viral genome sequences. More than 200 clinical trials have been launched, bringing together hospitals and laboratories around the globe.
“I never hear scientists — true scientists, good quality scientists — speak in terms of nationality,” said Dr. Francesco Perrone, who is leading a coronavirus clinical trial in Italy. “My nation, your nation. My language, your language. My geographic location, your geographic location. This is something that is really distant from true top-level scientists.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/worl ... 778d3e6de3
Never before, scientists say, have so many of the world’s researchers focused so urgently on a single topic. Nearly all other research has ground to a halt.
Using flag-draped memes and military terminology, the Trump administration and its Chinese counterparts have cast coronavirus research as national imperatives, sparking talk of a biotech arms race.
The world’s scientists, for the most part, have responded with a collective eye roll.
“Absolutely ridiculous,” said Jonathan Heeney, a Cambridge University researcher working on a coronavirus vaccine.
“That isn’t how things happen,” said Adrian Hill, the head of the Jenner Institute at Oxford, one of the largest vaccine research centers at an academic institution.
While political leaders have locked their borders, scientists have been shattering theirs, creating a global collaboration unlike any in history. Never before, researchers say, have so many experts in so many countries focused simultaneously on a single topic and with such urgency. Nearly all other research has ground to a halt.
Normal imperatives like academic credit have been set aside. Online repositories make studies available months ahead of journals. Researchers have identified and shared hundreds of viral genome sequences. More than 200 clinical trials have been launched, bringing together hospitals and laboratories around the globe.
“I never hear scientists — true scientists, good quality scientists — speak in terms of nationality,” said Dr. Francesco Perrone, who is leading a coronavirus clinical trial in Italy. “My nation, your nation. My language, your language. My geographic location, your geographic location. This is something that is really distant from true top-level scientists.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/worl ... 778d3e6de3
You Need Something New to Watch. What About the Universe?
Discover the boundaries of science — from your couch.
Video by Sarah Klein and Tom Mason
Ms. Klein and Mr. Mason are filmmakers.
In 1916, Albert Einstein made a prediction he thought could never be proved. He proposed that the acceleration or collision of stellar masses, such as black holes, would cause ripples that warp space and time. He called them gravitational waves. But he also supposed they would be far too small to detect. How do you measure something invisible? Nearly five decades later, Einstein’s unsolved mystery drove the physicist Rai Weiss to hunt for answers.
Weiss co-founded an observatory to prove the unprovable. Nergis Mavalvala, an astrophysicist on the team that built the observatory said, “We knew we were charting unknown territory.” Years passed. Then in 2015, the team found that Einstein was both right and wrong — gravitational waves exist and can be measured. The collaboration brought about one of the most important scientific breakthroughs in recent history. Their experience, portrayed in the short documentary above, shows that the limits of science are still untested. What else can we discover?
Watch video at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/opin ... ogin-email
Discover the boundaries of science — from your couch.
Video by Sarah Klein and Tom Mason
Ms. Klein and Mr. Mason are filmmakers.
In 1916, Albert Einstein made a prediction he thought could never be proved. He proposed that the acceleration or collision of stellar masses, such as black holes, would cause ripples that warp space and time. He called them gravitational waves. But he also supposed they would be far too small to detect. How do you measure something invisible? Nearly five decades later, Einstein’s unsolved mystery drove the physicist Rai Weiss to hunt for answers.
Weiss co-founded an observatory to prove the unprovable. Nergis Mavalvala, an astrophysicist on the team that built the observatory said, “We knew we were charting unknown territory.” Years passed. Then in 2015, the team found that Einstein was both right and wrong — gravitational waves exist and can be measured. The collaboration brought about one of the most important scientific breakthroughs in recent history. Their experience, portrayed in the short documentary above, shows that the limits of science are still untested. What else can we discover?
Watch video at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/opin ... ogin-email
Moderna Coronavirus Vaccine Trial Shows Promising Early Results
The company said a test in 8 healthy volunteers found its experimental vaccine was safe and provoked a strong immune response. It is on an accelerated timetable to begin larger human trials soon.
The first coronavirus vaccine to be tested in people appears to be safe and able to stimulate an immune response against the infection, the manufacturer, Moderna, announced on Monday, offering a glint of hope to a world desperate for ways to stop the pandemic.
The preliminary findings, in the first eight people who each received two doses of the experimental vaccine, must now be repeated in far larger tests in hundreds and then thousands of people, to find out if the vaccine can work in the real world. Moderna’s technology, involving genetic material from the virus called mRNA, is relatively new and has yet to produce any approved vaccine.
The promising early news sent Moderna’s stock soaring by more than 25 percent on Monday afternoon and helped drive Wall Street to its best day in six weeks. Stocks were also lifted by statements from the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, that the central bank would continue to support the economy and markets.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/heal ... 778d3e6de3
The company said a test in 8 healthy volunteers found its experimental vaccine was safe and provoked a strong immune response. It is on an accelerated timetable to begin larger human trials soon.
The first coronavirus vaccine to be tested in people appears to be safe and able to stimulate an immune response against the infection, the manufacturer, Moderna, announced on Monday, offering a glint of hope to a world desperate for ways to stop the pandemic.
The preliminary findings, in the first eight people who each received two doses of the experimental vaccine, must now be repeated in far larger tests in hundreds and then thousands of people, to find out if the vaccine can work in the real world. Moderna’s technology, involving genetic material from the virus called mRNA, is relatively new and has yet to produce any approved vaccine.
The promising early news sent Moderna’s stock soaring by more than 25 percent on Monday afternoon and helped drive Wall Street to its best day in six weeks. Stocks were also lifted by statements from the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, that the central bank would continue to support the economy and markets.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/heal ... 778d3e6de3
SpaceX launches new era of spaceflight with company's first crewed mission
NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are flying a brand-new spacecraft to the world’s orbiting laboratory.
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDAAgainst a backdrop of shifting clouds and patches of welcome blue sky, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket roared to life at 3:22 p.m. ET at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC), warming the already sweltering, sticky air with blindingly bright rocket fire and sending tremors through the Florida coast. Strapped into a spacecraft atop the 229-foot-tall rocket, veteran astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley soared into the sky, marking a triumphant return to orbit from U.S. shores.
“SpaceX, Dragon, we’re go for launch, let’s light this candle,” Hurley said to SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California, just before liftoff.
Behnken and Hurley—occasionally referred to by their colleagues as Dr. Bob and Chunky—are now cruising to the International Space Station, a journey that will take approximately 19 hours. This flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon is only the fifth time in history that U.S. astronauts have piloted a brand-new spacecraft into orbit.
For the first time since NASA retired its space shuttles in 2011, the space agency can launch astronauts from its home shores rather than paying for seats aboard Russian spacecraft. Now, NASA will buy seats on Crew Dragon. In the new Commercial Crew model, SpaceX retains ownership and operational control of its spacecraft, meaning anyone with enough cash, at least in theory, could buy a ticket to orbit.
“We want to send all kinds of people to space,” says Benji Reed, director of crew mission management at SpaceX. “Everything we’re doing is to open that new chapter in the space age.”
More...
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/scie ... 51408D9A54
NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are flying a brand-new spacecraft to the world’s orbiting laboratory.
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDAAgainst a backdrop of shifting clouds and patches of welcome blue sky, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket roared to life at 3:22 p.m. ET at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC), warming the already sweltering, sticky air with blindingly bright rocket fire and sending tremors through the Florida coast. Strapped into a spacecraft atop the 229-foot-tall rocket, veteran astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley soared into the sky, marking a triumphant return to orbit from U.S. shores.
“SpaceX, Dragon, we’re go for launch, let’s light this candle,” Hurley said to SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California, just before liftoff.
Behnken and Hurley—occasionally referred to by their colleagues as Dr. Bob and Chunky—are now cruising to the International Space Station, a journey that will take approximately 19 hours. This flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon is only the fifth time in history that U.S. astronauts have piloted a brand-new spacecraft into orbit.
For the first time since NASA retired its space shuttles in 2011, the space agency can launch astronauts from its home shores rather than paying for seats aboard Russian spacecraft. Now, NASA will buy seats on Crew Dragon. In the new Commercial Crew model, SpaceX retains ownership and operational control of its spacecraft, meaning anyone with enough cash, at least in theory, could buy a ticket to orbit.
“We want to send all kinds of people to space,” says Benji Reed, director of crew mission management at SpaceX. “Everything we’re doing is to open that new chapter in the space age.”
More...
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/scie ... 51408D9A54
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Evolution: why it seems to have a direction and what to expect next
Matthew Wills, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath
The Conversation June 2, 2020, 3:04 AM CDT
The diversity and complexity of life on Earth is astonishing: 8 million or more living species – from algae to elephants – all evolved from a simple, single-celled common ancestor around 3.5 billion years ago. But does that mean that evolution always and inevitably generates greater diversity and complexity, having a predictable direction?
Charles Darwin identified three ingredients necessary for natural selection to occur. Individuals must be different, so there is variation in the population. They must also be able to pass this variation on to offspring. Finally, individuals must compete for resources that limit the number of offspring they can produce. Individuals with variations that allow them to obtain more resources are likely to produce more offspring like themselves.
Evolution also depends on context and environment, which notoriously change constantly in unpredictable ways. For example, fishes who start living and evolving in unlit caves often lose their eyes, because the costs of developing them outweigh their advantages.
So natural selection operates from one generation to the next. It cannot plan ahead or have a goal. In addition, not all evolutionary change is a response to selection, but can be neutral or random. It is not even guaranteed to produce more species, since evolution can occur in a single lineage and this can go extinct at any time. How can we reconcile such an aimless process with the bewildering diversity and complexity we see?
Ecological influence
Ecology and evolution are two sides of the same coin. The environment is not just the physical surroundings of an organism, but also the other biological species with which it interacts.
We can see this environmental interaction deep in the history of life. For billions of years, organisms were “stuck” as single cells within the seas. Several groups independently evolved multi-cellularity (perhaps 25 times). But the first animals, plants and fungi with complex development, different tissues and organs only appeared around 540 million years ago, with the Cambrian “explosion” of diversity.
This may have been triggered by increased levels of oxygen in the oceans, which was, in turn, the result of photosynthesis – the process by which plants and other organisms convert sunlight into energy while releasing oxygen – in much simpler forms of life over millions of years.
Once animals had attained greater size and evolved guts, hard parts, jaws, teeth, eyes and legs, complex food webs became possible – along with “arms races” between predators and prey. Groups with adaptations that enabled them to live on land opened up even more opportunities. Once out of the bag, these innovations were difficult to “uninvent” – promoting diversity.
The only diagram in Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” shows species splitting through time. If more species originate than go extinct, then species richness increases. Darwin wondered whether ecological space might simply “fill up” one day.
But so far as we can tell, the species count has been increasing for most of the last 250 million years. Even past natural mass extinctions were only temporary setbacks that may have created even more opportunities for diversity in the long run.
Variation is not random
As organisms evolve more complicated systems of development, they may, however, become less able to modify certain aspects of their anatomy. This is partly because genes, tissues and organs often have several different functions, so it may become difficult to change one for the better without accidentally “breaking” something elsewhere.
For example, nearly all mammals – from giraffes to humans – are stuck with just seven neck bones. Whenever different numbers develop or evolve, they bring other anatomical problems. Birds are entirely different, and seem to evolve new numbers of neck vertebrae with remarkable ease: Swans alone have between 22 and 25. But in general, while evolution produces new species, the flexibility of the body plans of those species may decrease with rising complexity.
Take mammals. They come from a common ancestor, and have taken strikingly similar forms even though they have evolved on different continents. This is another example of the fact that evolution isn’t entirely unpredictable – there are only so many solutions to the same physical and biological problems, like seeing, digging or flying.
The future of evolution
Clearly, there is an apparent contradiction at the heart of evolutionary biology. On one hand, the mechanisms of evolution have no predisposition for change in any particular direction. On the other hand, let those mechanisms get going, and beyond some threshold, the interwoven ecological and developmental systems they generate tend to yield more and more species with greater maximum complexity.
So can we expect more diversity and complexity going forward? We are now at the beginning of a sixth mass extinction, caused by humans and showing no signs of stopping – wiping out the results of millions of years of evolution. Despite this, humans themselves are too numerous, widespread and adaptable to be at serious risk of extinction any time soon. It is far more likely that we will extend our distribution yet further by engineering habitable biospheres on other planets.
On other planets, we may one day find alien life. Would that follow the same evolutionary trajectory as life on Earth? From one cell, the transition to multi-cellularity may be an easy hurdle to jump. Although it came quite late on Earth, it nevertheless happened many times. More complicated development with different tissue types evolved in only a few groups on Earth, so may represent a higher bar.
If alien biology makes it over some hurdles, its development is indeed likely to favour patterns of increasing diversity and maximum complexity. But perhaps a dominant, intelligent species like humans will always be bad news for many of the other species on the planets where they evolve.
The astronomer Frank Drake proposed an equation to estimate how many intelligent civilisations we might expect in our galaxy. This contained a term for how long such civilisations might exist before destroying themselves. Drake was pessimistic about this: let’s hope he was wrong.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ev ... 27750.html
Matthew Wills, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath
The Conversation June 2, 2020, 3:04 AM CDT
The diversity and complexity of life on Earth is astonishing: 8 million or more living species – from algae to elephants – all evolved from a simple, single-celled common ancestor around 3.5 billion years ago. But does that mean that evolution always and inevitably generates greater diversity and complexity, having a predictable direction?
Charles Darwin identified three ingredients necessary for natural selection to occur. Individuals must be different, so there is variation in the population. They must also be able to pass this variation on to offspring. Finally, individuals must compete for resources that limit the number of offspring they can produce. Individuals with variations that allow them to obtain more resources are likely to produce more offspring like themselves.
Evolution also depends on context and environment, which notoriously change constantly in unpredictable ways. For example, fishes who start living and evolving in unlit caves often lose their eyes, because the costs of developing them outweigh their advantages.
So natural selection operates from one generation to the next. It cannot plan ahead or have a goal. In addition, not all evolutionary change is a response to selection, but can be neutral or random. It is not even guaranteed to produce more species, since evolution can occur in a single lineage and this can go extinct at any time. How can we reconcile such an aimless process with the bewildering diversity and complexity we see?
Ecological influence
Ecology and evolution are two sides of the same coin. The environment is not just the physical surroundings of an organism, but also the other biological species with which it interacts.
We can see this environmental interaction deep in the history of life. For billions of years, organisms were “stuck” as single cells within the seas. Several groups independently evolved multi-cellularity (perhaps 25 times). But the first animals, plants and fungi with complex development, different tissues and organs only appeared around 540 million years ago, with the Cambrian “explosion” of diversity.
This may have been triggered by increased levels of oxygen in the oceans, which was, in turn, the result of photosynthesis – the process by which plants and other organisms convert sunlight into energy while releasing oxygen – in much simpler forms of life over millions of years.
Once animals had attained greater size and evolved guts, hard parts, jaws, teeth, eyes and legs, complex food webs became possible – along with “arms races” between predators and prey. Groups with adaptations that enabled them to live on land opened up even more opportunities. Once out of the bag, these innovations were difficult to “uninvent” – promoting diversity.
The only diagram in Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” shows species splitting through time. If more species originate than go extinct, then species richness increases. Darwin wondered whether ecological space might simply “fill up” one day.
But so far as we can tell, the species count has been increasing for most of the last 250 million years. Even past natural mass extinctions were only temporary setbacks that may have created even more opportunities for diversity in the long run.
Variation is not random
As organisms evolve more complicated systems of development, they may, however, become less able to modify certain aspects of their anatomy. This is partly because genes, tissues and organs often have several different functions, so it may become difficult to change one for the better without accidentally “breaking” something elsewhere.
For example, nearly all mammals – from giraffes to humans – are stuck with just seven neck bones. Whenever different numbers develop or evolve, they bring other anatomical problems. Birds are entirely different, and seem to evolve new numbers of neck vertebrae with remarkable ease: Swans alone have between 22 and 25. But in general, while evolution produces new species, the flexibility of the body plans of those species may decrease with rising complexity.
Take mammals. They come from a common ancestor, and have taken strikingly similar forms even though they have evolved on different continents. This is another example of the fact that evolution isn’t entirely unpredictable – there are only so many solutions to the same physical and biological problems, like seeing, digging or flying.
The future of evolution
Clearly, there is an apparent contradiction at the heart of evolutionary biology. On one hand, the mechanisms of evolution have no predisposition for change in any particular direction. On the other hand, let those mechanisms get going, and beyond some threshold, the interwoven ecological and developmental systems they generate tend to yield more and more species with greater maximum complexity.
So can we expect more diversity and complexity going forward? We are now at the beginning of a sixth mass extinction, caused by humans and showing no signs of stopping – wiping out the results of millions of years of evolution. Despite this, humans themselves are too numerous, widespread and adaptable to be at serious risk of extinction any time soon. It is far more likely that we will extend our distribution yet further by engineering habitable biospheres on other planets.
On other planets, we may one day find alien life. Would that follow the same evolutionary trajectory as life on Earth? From one cell, the transition to multi-cellularity may be an easy hurdle to jump. Although it came quite late on Earth, it nevertheless happened many times. More complicated development with different tissue types evolved in only a few groups on Earth, so may represent a higher bar.
If alien biology makes it over some hurdles, its development is indeed likely to favour patterns of increasing diversity and maximum complexity. But perhaps a dominant, intelligent species like humans will always be bad news for many of the other species on the planets where they evolve.
The astronomer Frank Drake proposed an equation to estimate how many intelligent civilisations we might expect in our galaxy. This contained a term for how long such civilisations might exist before destroying themselves. Drake was pessimistic about this: let’s hope he was wrong.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ev ... 27750.html
There is a thread on evolution at:swamidada wrote:Evolution: why it seems to have a direction and what to expect next
Matthew Wills, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath
The Conversation June 2, 2020, 3:04 AM CDT
Darwinism Verses Intelligent Design
http://www.ismaili.net/html/modules.php ... highlight=
COVID-19 Survivor Saved by This Mind-Blowing, First-Ever Procedure
A young woman in her mid-20s was so suffering from the ill-effects of COVID-19 that she underwent a 10-hour double lung transplant procedure, and is now convalescing in recovery. According to a report by The New York Times, this is the first known lung transplant for a COVID-19 patient in the United States and, if her healing continues, the surgery gives great hope for more coronavirus patients in the future.
The inflammation in the 26-year-old patient's lungs had left hem "completely plastered to tissue around them, the heart, the chest wall and diaphragm," Ankit Bharat, MD, the chief of thoracic surgery and surgical director of the lung transplant program at Northwestern Medicine, told The Times. That's the primary reason why the surgery took 10 hours, much longer than most transplants.
Bharat noted that the damage to the patient's lungs was so severe that the double transplant was her only chance for survival. His team wanted "other transplant centers to know that the operation could save some desperately ill COVID-19 patients," The Times reports.
But, Bharat added, "I want to emphasize that this is not for every COVID patient. We are talking about patients who are relatively young, very functional, with minimal to no comorbid conditions, with permanent lung damage who can't get off the ventilator."
RELATED: For more up-to-date information, sign up for our daily newsletter.
There is still much research to be done on the lasting effects of the COVID-19 contagion. As therapeutic treatments and vaccines go through trial testing for confirmed safety and efficacy, surgical treatment for the those with the most severe lung damage could be another option, providing of course this history-making patient continues to make a full recovery. She is currently on a ventilator and reportedly improving. "She's awake, she's smiling, she FaceTimed with her family," Bharat said. And for more ways COVID-19 could take a toll for years to come, check out 7 Long-Term Health Risks of Coronavirus You Need to Know. https://bestlifeonline.com/long-term-co ... n=msn-feed
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/health/medica ... ailsignout
A young woman in her mid-20s was so suffering from the ill-effects of COVID-19 that she underwent a 10-hour double lung transplant procedure, and is now convalescing in recovery. According to a report by The New York Times, this is the first known lung transplant for a COVID-19 patient in the United States and, if her healing continues, the surgery gives great hope for more coronavirus patients in the future.
The inflammation in the 26-year-old patient's lungs had left hem "completely plastered to tissue around them, the heart, the chest wall and diaphragm," Ankit Bharat, MD, the chief of thoracic surgery and surgical director of the lung transplant program at Northwestern Medicine, told The Times. That's the primary reason why the surgery took 10 hours, much longer than most transplants.
Bharat noted that the damage to the patient's lungs was so severe that the double transplant was her only chance for survival. His team wanted "other transplant centers to know that the operation could save some desperately ill COVID-19 patients," The Times reports.
But, Bharat added, "I want to emphasize that this is not for every COVID patient. We are talking about patients who are relatively young, very functional, with minimal to no comorbid conditions, with permanent lung damage who can't get off the ventilator."
RELATED: For more up-to-date information, sign up for our daily newsletter.
There is still much research to be done on the lasting effects of the COVID-19 contagion. As therapeutic treatments and vaccines go through trial testing for confirmed safety and efficacy, surgical treatment for the those with the most severe lung damage could be another option, providing of course this history-making patient continues to make a full recovery. She is currently on a ventilator and reportedly improving. "She's awake, she's smiling, she FaceTimed with her family," Bharat said. And for more ways COVID-19 could take a toll for years to come, check out 7 Long-Term Health Risks of Coronavirus You Need to Know. https://bestlifeonline.com/long-term-co ... n=msn-feed
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/health/medica ... ailsignout
Can a Vaccine for Covid-19 Be Developed in Record Time?
A discussion moderated by Siddhartha Mukherjee.
In the history of medicine, rarely has a vaccine been developed in less than five years. Among the fastest to be developed was the current mumps vaccine, which was isolated from the throat washings of a child named Jeryl Lynn in 1963. Over the next months, the virus was systematically “weakened” in the lab by her father, a biomedical scientist named Maurice Hilleman. Such a weakened or attenuated virus stimulates an immune response but does not cause the disease; the immune response protects against future infections with the actual virus. Human trials were carried out over the next two years, and the vaccine was licensed by Merck in December 1967.
Antiviral drugs, too, have generally taken decades to develop; effective combinations of them take even longer. The first cases of AIDS were described in the early 1980s; it took more than a decade to develop and validate the highly effective triple drug cocktails that are now the mainstay of therapy. We are still continuing to develop new classes of medicines against H.I.V., and notably, there is no vaccine for that disease. And yet the oft-cited target for creating a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, is 12 months, 18 at the outside.
Pulling that off is arguably the most important scientific undertaking in generations. The Times assembled (virtually, of course) a round table to help us understand the maddening complexity of the challenge and the extraordinary collaboration it has already inspired. The group included a virologist; a vaccine scientist; an immunologist and oncologist; a biotech scientist and inventor; and a former head of the Food and Drug Administration.
Discussion at:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... 778d3e6de3
A discussion moderated by Siddhartha Mukherjee.
In the history of medicine, rarely has a vaccine been developed in less than five years. Among the fastest to be developed was the current mumps vaccine, which was isolated from the throat washings of a child named Jeryl Lynn in 1963. Over the next months, the virus was systematically “weakened” in the lab by her father, a biomedical scientist named Maurice Hilleman. Such a weakened or attenuated virus stimulates an immune response but does not cause the disease; the immune response protects against future infections with the actual virus. Human trials were carried out over the next two years, and the vaccine was licensed by Merck in December 1967.
Antiviral drugs, too, have generally taken decades to develop; effective combinations of them take even longer. The first cases of AIDS were described in the early 1980s; it took more than a decade to develop and validate the highly effective triple drug cocktails that are now the mainstay of therapy. We are still continuing to develop new classes of medicines against H.I.V., and notably, there is no vaccine for that disease. And yet the oft-cited target for creating a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, is 12 months, 18 at the outside.
Pulling that off is arguably the most important scientific undertaking in generations. The Times assembled (virtually, of course) a round table to help us understand the maddening complexity of the challenge and the extraordinary collaboration it has already inspired. The group included a virologist; a vaccine scientist; an immunologist and oncologist; a biotech scientist and inventor; and a former head of the Food and Drug Administration.
Discussion at:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... 778d3e6de3
Mars Is About to Have Its ‘Wright Brothers Moment’
As part of its next Mars mission, NASA is sending an experimental helicopter to fly through the red planet’s thin atmosphere.
Watch animation at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/scie ... 778d3e6de3
NASA is about to take to the air on another planet.
As part of its next mission to Mars, leaving Earth this summer, the space agency will attempt to do something that has never been done before: fly a helicopter through the rarefied atmosphere of Mars.
If it works, the small helicopter, named Ingenuity, will open a new way for future robotic explorers to get a bird’s-eye view of Mars and other worlds in the solar system.
“This is very analogous to the Wright brothers moment, but on another planet,” said MiMi Aung, the project manager of the Mars helicopter at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory over the past six years.
Flying on Mars is not a trivial endeavor. There is not much air there to push against to generate lift. At the surface of Mars, the atmosphere is just 1/100th as dense as Earth’s. The lesser gravity — one-third of what you feel here — helps with getting airborne. But taking off from the surface of Mars is the equivalent of flying at an altitude of 100,000 feet on Earth. No terrestrial helicopter has ever flown that high, and that’s more than twice the altitude that jetliners typically fly at.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/scie ... 778d3e6de3
As part of its next Mars mission, NASA is sending an experimental helicopter to fly through the red planet’s thin atmosphere.
Watch animation at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/scie ... 778d3e6de3
NASA is about to take to the air on another planet.
As part of its next mission to Mars, leaving Earth this summer, the space agency will attempt to do something that has never been done before: fly a helicopter through the rarefied atmosphere of Mars.
If it works, the small helicopter, named Ingenuity, will open a new way for future robotic explorers to get a bird’s-eye view of Mars and other worlds in the solar system.
“This is very analogous to the Wright brothers moment, but on another planet,” said MiMi Aung, the project manager of the Mars helicopter at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory over the past six years.
Flying on Mars is not a trivial endeavor. There is not much air there to push against to generate lift. At the surface of Mars, the atmosphere is just 1/100th as dense as Earth’s. The lesser gravity — one-third of what you feel here — helps with getting airborne. But taking off from the surface of Mars is the equivalent of flying at an altitude of 100,000 feet on Earth. No terrestrial helicopter has ever flown that high, and that’s more than twice the altitude that jetliners typically fly at.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/scie ... 778d3e6de3
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Hummingbirds Can See Colors We Humans Can't
Daisy Hernandez
Popular MechanicsJuly 18, 2020, 8:00 AM
Photo credit: DeepDesertPhoto - Getty Images
Photo credit: DeepDesertPhoto - Getty Images
From Popular Mechanics
Researchers have spent three years studying hummingbirds to deduce whether they can distinguish between spectral and nonspectral colors.
A newly published paper has confirmed that these incredible tiny creatures indeed have the ability to tell the difference between these color types and that they can see colors completely unknown to the human eye.
Hummingbirds are one of nature’s incredible wonders—they run on a diet fueled mostly by high levels of sugar (and sometimes insects), they’re almost constantly on the move, and now we’ve found out that they can see colors on the spectrum that humans can’t even imagine.
A recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) describes the ability of some animals—hummingbirds in particular—to see nonspectral colors. This refers to colors that don’t appear in the spectrum of visible light (you can think of spectral colors as being the ones we can see in a rainbow.)
Purple is the only nonspectral color that humans can see. Even though you might argue that purple is indeed visible in a rainbow, it’s actually violet that we see every time one appears overhead in the distance.
Hummingbirds have the ability to see nonspectral colors thanks to four color cone types present in their eyes (a phenomenon known as tetrachromacy); humans only have three cone types (trichromacy) and although it doesn’t seem like such a big disparity, when it comes to seeing color, that fourth cone type makes all the difference.
To find out how hummingbirds perceive color, the research group set up workstations at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) in Colorado where they trained wild broad-tailed hummingbirds (Selasphorus platycercus) to actively participate in their experiment. The group was careful to keep their work environment as natural as possible for the birds over the course of the three years they worked on this study.
Photo credit: Randall Roberts / 500px - Getty Images
Photo credit: Randall Roberts / 500px - Getty Images
“Most detailed perceptual experiments on birds are performed in the lab, but we risk missing the bigger picture of how birds really use color vision in their daily lives,” says Mary Caswell Stoddard, assistant professor at Princeton University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, who led the research efforts.
“Hummingbirds are perfect for studying color vision in the wild. These sugar fiends have evolved to respond to flower colors that advertise a nectar reward, so they can learn color associations rapidly and with little training,” says Stoddard.
In order to test how well S. platycercus could see nonspectral colors, Stoddard and team “built a pair of custom ‘bird vision’ LED tubes programmed to display a broad range of colors, including nonspectral colors like ultraviolet+green” according to a Princeton University news release. Then, the team would wake up before sunrise to set up two feeders; one held a sugar water mixture while the second contained plain water.
Each feeder has a LED tube next to it with the sugar water feeder giving off a certain color while the plain water feeder gave off a different color. In order to see if the birds were truly differentiating between the feeders due to color, they would switch the positions of the feeders around “so the birds could not simply use location to pinpoint a sweet treat.”
“[Researchers] also performed control experiments to ensure that the tiny birds were not using smell or another inadvertent cue to find the reward. Over the course of several hours, wild hummingbirds learned to visit the rewarding color. Using this setup, the researchers recorded over 6,000 feeder visits in a series of 19 experiments.”
The results showed that the birds were actively able to differentiate between the sweet water feeder and the plain one because of the consistent color coding researchers used.
“The ultraviolet+green light and green light looked identical to us, but the hummingbirds kept correctly choosing the ultraviolet+green light associated with sugar water. Our experiments enabled us to get a sneak peek into what the world looks like to a hummingbird,” said paper co-author Harold Eyster.
The researchers concluded that the hummingbirds “can discriminate a variety of nonspectral colors, including UV+red, UV+green, purple, and UV+yellow”—colors that the human eye cannot see.
The team also theorizes that these little guys “perceive many natural colors as nonspectral” after analyzing approximately 3,300 plumage and plant colors; what looks like a vibrant flower to us could be a completely different color to a hummingbird. This could indicate that the ability to perceive nonspectral colors may be a critical for “signaling and foraging.”
Still, we can’t be sure what these birds are seeing, for now, we just know that they can see an array of colors the remains invisible to the human eye.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/hu ... 00635.html
Daisy Hernandez
Popular MechanicsJuly 18, 2020, 8:00 AM
Photo credit: DeepDesertPhoto - Getty Images
Photo credit: DeepDesertPhoto - Getty Images
From Popular Mechanics
Researchers have spent three years studying hummingbirds to deduce whether they can distinguish between spectral and nonspectral colors.
A newly published paper has confirmed that these incredible tiny creatures indeed have the ability to tell the difference between these color types and that they can see colors completely unknown to the human eye.
Hummingbirds are one of nature’s incredible wonders—they run on a diet fueled mostly by high levels of sugar (and sometimes insects), they’re almost constantly on the move, and now we’ve found out that they can see colors on the spectrum that humans can’t even imagine.
A recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) describes the ability of some animals—hummingbirds in particular—to see nonspectral colors. This refers to colors that don’t appear in the spectrum of visible light (you can think of spectral colors as being the ones we can see in a rainbow.)
Purple is the only nonspectral color that humans can see. Even though you might argue that purple is indeed visible in a rainbow, it’s actually violet that we see every time one appears overhead in the distance.
Hummingbirds have the ability to see nonspectral colors thanks to four color cone types present in their eyes (a phenomenon known as tetrachromacy); humans only have three cone types (trichromacy) and although it doesn’t seem like such a big disparity, when it comes to seeing color, that fourth cone type makes all the difference.
To find out how hummingbirds perceive color, the research group set up workstations at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) in Colorado where they trained wild broad-tailed hummingbirds (Selasphorus platycercus) to actively participate in their experiment. The group was careful to keep their work environment as natural as possible for the birds over the course of the three years they worked on this study.
Photo credit: Randall Roberts / 500px - Getty Images
Photo credit: Randall Roberts / 500px - Getty Images
“Most detailed perceptual experiments on birds are performed in the lab, but we risk missing the bigger picture of how birds really use color vision in their daily lives,” says Mary Caswell Stoddard, assistant professor at Princeton University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, who led the research efforts.
“Hummingbirds are perfect for studying color vision in the wild. These sugar fiends have evolved to respond to flower colors that advertise a nectar reward, so they can learn color associations rapidly and with little training,” says Stoddard.
In order to test how well S. platycercus could see nonspectral colors, Stoddard and team “built a pair of custom ‘bird vision’ LED tubes programmed to display a broad range of colors, including nonspectral colors like ultraviolet+green” according to a Princeton University news release. Then, the team would wake up before sunrise to set up two feeders; one held a sugar water mixture while the second contained plain water.
Each feeder has a LED tube next to it with the sugar water feeder giving off a certain color while the plain water feeder gave off a different color. In order to see if the birds were truly differentiating between the feeders due to color, they would switch the positions of the feeders around “so the birds could not simply use location to pinpoint a sweet treat.”
“[Researchers] also performed control experiments to ensure that the tiny birds were not using smell or another inadvertent cue to find the reward. Over the course of several hours, wild hummingbirds learned to visit the rewarding color. Using this setup, the researchers recorded over 6,000 feeder visits in a series of 19 experiments.”
The results showed that the birds were actively able to differentiate between the sweet water feeder and the plain one because of the consistent color coding researchers used.
“The ultraviolet+green light and green light looked identical to us, but the hummingbirds kept correctly choosing the ultraviolet+green light associated with sugar water. Our experiments enabled us to get a sneak peek into what the world looks like to a hummingbird,” said paper co-author Harold Eyster.
The researchers concluded that the hummingbirds “can discriminate a variety of nonspectral colors, including UV+red, UV+green, purple, and UV+yellow”—colors that the human eye cannot see.
The team also theorizes that these little guys “perceive many natural colors as nonspectral” after analyzing approximately 3,300 plumage and plant colors; what looks like a vibrant flower to us could be a completely different color to a hummingbird. This could indicate that the ability to perceive nonspectral colors may be a critical for “signaling and foraging.”
Still, we can’t be sure what these birds are seeing, for now, we just know that they can see an array of colors the remains invisible to the human eye.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/hu ... 00635.html
Mars launch: NASA sends Perseverance rover to space
The spacecraft carrying the rover and helicopter successfully launched to Mars Thursday morning aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 541 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 7:50 a.m. ET.
The team in the control center at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed acquisition of signal from the spacecraft shortly after 9 a.m. ET.
"This signifies that JPL's deep space network has locked on to the spacecraft, which is on its journey to Mars," said Omar Baez, launch manager at NASA's Launch Services Program.
Students Alex Mather and Vaneeza Rupani, who named the rover and its accompanying helicopter during two national contests earlier this year, were present for the launch.
The control center at JPL in Pasadena, California did experience some earthquake activity ahead of the launch this morning, but it did not impact the launch.
"I'm exceptionally excited about what we're about to do because we're going to launch Mars 2020 with the Perseverance robot," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine during a press briefing at Kennedy Space Center. "But there is so much more going on here. This is the first time in history where we're going to Mars with an explicit mission to find life on another world -- ancient life on Mars."
More...
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/technolo ... ailsignout
******
Earth to Mars: an Ismaili Jamatkhana and Center Program
Robotics engineers discuss the Mars 2020 mission and the new rover.
“The ability to help answer questions that are deep-rooted, questions that people have been asking since ancient times: ‘What’s out there? Are we alone?’ These are the types of questions that everyone can relate to no matter what your background or culture…” said Dr. Philip Twu, Robotics Systems Engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, as he described the purpose of the Mars 2020 mission.
Through an Ismaili Jamatkhana and Center Program that was moderated by Ali Talaksi, a Masters student in Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, two key engineers from the Mars 2020 mission answered questions about the mission and provided an inside view into the Perseverance Rover that is scheduled to launch on July 30, 2020.
A number of factors make Mars the ideal planet to consider for life beyond Earth, including relative proximity to earth, past abundance of water, and solid (versus gaseous) composition. Thus, a number of countries are investing resources to study this planet, and the Mars 2020 mission is one of three expeditions scheduled for a short launch window this summer, when Mars and Earth align favorably.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) launched the Amal probe, which will orbit around Mars and continue to answer questions about how Mars might have transformed from an environment that could sustain life, to its current frigid and sterile state. China launched Tianwen-1, which will orbit Mars and also land a rover on the planet. This mission hopes to answer questions about past life on the planet, and how to make Mars an inhabitable environment for humans in the future.
Perseverance is the fifth rover to be sent to Mars by the United States over the last twenty plus years. Through previous missions, NASA scientists have found clues suggesting a past abundance of water and conditions that might have sustained microbial life at some point during the history of this planet.
More...
https://the.ismaili/usa/our-community/e ... er-program
The spacecraft carrying the rover and helicopter successfully launched to Mars Thursday morning aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 541 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 7:50 a.m. ET.
The team in the control center at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed acquisition of signal from the spacecraft shortly after 9 a.m. ET.
"This signifies that JPL's deep space network has locked on to the spacecraft, which is on its journey to Mars," said Omar Baez, launch manager at NASA's Launch Services Program.
Students Alex Mather and Vaneeza Rupani, who named the rover and its accompanying helicopter during two national contests earlier this year, were present for the launch.
The control center at JPL in Pasadena, California did experience some earthquake activity ahead of the launch this morning, but it did not impact the launch.
"I'm exceptionally excited about what we're about to do because we're going to launch Mars 2020 with the Perseverance robot," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine during a press briefing at Kennedy Space Center. "But there is so much more going on here. This is the first time in history where we're going to Mars with an explicit mission to find life on another world -- ancient life on Mars."
More...
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/technolo ... ailsignout
******
Earth to Mars: an Ismaili Jamatkhana and Center Program
Robotics engineers discuss the Mars 2020 mission and the new rover.
“The ability to help answer questions that are deep-rooted, questions that people have been asking since ancient times: ‘What’s out there? Are we alone?’ These are the types of questions that everyone can relate to no matter what your background or culture…” said Dr. Philip Twu, Robotics Systems Engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, as he described the purpose of the Mars 2020 mission.
Through an Ismaili Jamatkhana and Center Program that was moderated by Ali Talaksi, a Masters student in Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, two key engineers from the Mars 2020 mission answered questions about the mission and provided an inside view into the Perseverance Rover that is scheduled to launch on July 30, 2020.
A number of factors make Mars the ideal planet to consider for life beyond Earth, including relative proximity to earth, past abundance of water, and solid (versus gaseous) composition. Thus, a number of countries are investing resources to study this planet, and the Mars 2020 mission is one of three expeditions scheduled for a short launch window this summer, when Mars and Earth align favorably.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) launched the Amal probe, which will orbit around Mars and continue to answer questions about how Mars might have transformed from an environment that could sustain life, to its current frigid and sterile state. China launched Tianwen-1, which will orbit Mars and also land a rover on the planet. This mission hopes to answer questions about past life on the planet, and how to make Mars an inhabitable environment for humans in the future.
Perseverance is the fifth rover to be sent to Mars by the United States over the last twenty plus years. Through previous missions, NASA scientists have found clues suggesting a past abundance of water and conditions that might have sustained microbial life at some point during the history of this planet.
More...
https://the.ismaili/usa/our-community/e ... er-program
Scared That Covid-19 Immunity Won’t Last? Don’t Be
Dropping antibody counts aren’t a sign that our immune system is failing against the coronavirus, nor an omen that we can’t develop a viable vaccine.
Within the last couple of months, several scientific studies have come out — some peer-reviewed, others not — indicating that the antibody response of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 dropped significantly within two months. The news has sparked fears that the very immunity of patients with Covid-19 may be waning fast — dampening hopes for the development of an effective and durable vaccine.
But these concerns are confused and mistaken.
Both our bodies’ natural immunity and immunity acquired through vaccination serve the same function, which is to inhibit a virus and prevent it from causing a disease. But they don’t always work quite the same way.
And so a finding that naturally occurring antibodies in some Covid-19 patients are fading doesn’t actually mean very much for the likely efficacy of vaccines under development. Science, in this case, can be more effective than nature.
The human immune system has evolved to serve two functions: expediency and precision. Hence, we have two types of immunity: innate immunity, which jumps into action within hours, sometimes just minutes, of an infection; and adaptive immunity, which develops over days and weeks.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Dropping antibody counts aren’t a sign that our immune system is failing against the coronavirus, nor an omen that we can’t develop a viable vaccine.
Within the last couple of months, several scientific studies have come out — some peer-reviewed, others not — indicating that the antibody response of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 dropped significantly within two months. The news has sparked fears that the very immunity of patients with Covid-19 may be waning fast — dampening hopes for the development of an effective and durable vaccine.
But these concerns are confused and mistaken.
Both our bodies’ natural immunity and immunity acquired through vaccination serve the same function, which is to inhibit a virus and prevent it from causing a disease. But they don’t always work quite the same way.
And so a finding that naturally occurring antibodies in some Covid-19 patients are fading doesn’t actually mean very much for the likely efficacy of vaccines under development. Science, in this case, can be more effective than nature.
The human immune system has evolved to serve two functions: expediency and precision. Hence, we have two types of immunity: innate immunity, which jumps into action within hours, sometimes just minutes, of an infection; and adaptive immunity, which develops over days and weeks.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/opin ... 778d3e6de3
REUTERS/MICHEL LAPLACE TOULOUSE/FILES
Afar depression, 120 meters below sea level, an arid region near the Eritrean border in Ethiopia
GREAT DIVIDE
Scientists say a new ocean will form in Africa as the continent continues to split into two
August 13, 2020
By Uwagbale Edward-Ekpu
The East African Rift system made up the western and eastern continental rifts, and stretches from the Afar region of Ethiopia down to Mozambique. It is an active continental rift that began millions of years ago, splitting at 7mm annually. The regular eruption of volcanoes along the rift and new insights into the break up of continents adds to the belief that the continent may be splitting to form a new ocean.
East Africa is home to several visible geographical wonders that have attracted tourists to the area. These include Lake Malawi and Tanzania’s Lake Tanganyika—respectively, the fourth largest freshwater and the second deepest lakes in the world. It also includes active volcanoes such as the Ol Doinyo Lengai in Tanzania, and the DallaFilla and Erta Ale in Ethiopia.
The Erta Ale stands out as one of the world’s most active volcanoes and one of the only eight and possibly the longest-existing lava lakes in the world.
Though not visible to tourists, among the wonders of the region is the Victoria microplate, one of the largest continental microplates. The Victoria microplate is a rift branch which, along chains of deep lakes and volcanoes, makes up the several features of the East African Rift System.
NASA
In eastern Africa, in the Afar region of Ethiopia, a nearly barren rockscape marks the location of the meeting place of three separate pieces of the Earth’s crust
In a recent study, the Victoria microplate, which lies between the eastern and western branches of the Rift, was found to be rotating counterclockwise for the last two years with respect to the African Plate—the major tectonic plate constituting most of the African continent. This microplate was found to rotate in the opposite direction to all the other neighboring microplates in the region.
While this gives researchers new insight into the splitting process of the East Africa Rift system, the “Y” shaped end of the rift at the Afar region is getting more attention, as to where an ocean will likely be formed if the splits continue. The “Y” shaped junction is where the African, Somalian, and Arabian tectonic plates meet near Djibouti and Eritrea and it is associated with active volcanos including the Erta Ale volcano.
NASA
Colored digital elevation model showing tectonic plate boundaries, outlines of the elevation highs demonstrating the thermal bulges and large lakes of East Africa.
Researchers believe the volcanic activity in the region suggests a rift-to-ridge transition. The Erta Ale has been erupting constantly for over 50 years and it is believed that as the Erta Ale continues to erupt, a new narrow ocean basin with its mid-ocean ridge will be formed.
However, researchers are uncertain about the future of the East African rift—whether the split will continue and an ocean will eventually be formed. At the rate at which the Afar rift is splitting, it will take tens of million years for an ocean to eventually be formed.
https://qz.com/africa/1891403/africa-is ... yptr=yahoo
Afar depression, 120 meters below sea level, an arid region near the Eritrean border in Ethiopia
GREAT DIVIDE
Scientists say a new ocean will form in Africa as the continent continues to split into two
August 13, 2020
By Uwagbale Edward-Ekpu
The East African Rift system made up the western and eastern continental rifts, and stretches from the Afar region of Ethiopia down to Mozambique. It is an active continental rift that began millions of years ago, splitting at 7mm annually. The regular eruption of volcanoes along the rift and new insights into the break up of continents adds to the belief that the continent may be splitting to form a new ocean.
East Africa is home to several visible geographical wonders that have attracted tourists to the area. These include Lake Malawi and Tanzania’s Lake Tanganyika—respectively, the fourth largest freshwater and the second deepest lakes in the world. It also includes active volcanoes such as the Ol Doinyo Lengai in Tanzania, and the DallaFilla and Erta Ale in Ethiopia.
The Erta Ale stands out as one of the world’s most active volcanoes and one of the only eight and possibly the longest-existing lava lakes in the world.
Though not visible to tourists, among the wonders of the region is the Victoria microplate, one of the largest continental microplates. The Victoria microplate is a rift branch which, along chains of deep lakes and volcanoes, makes up the several features of the East African Rift System.
NASA
In eastern Africa, in the Afar region of Ethiopia, a nearly barren rockscape marks the location of the meeting place of three separate pieces of the Earth’s crust
In a recent study, the Victoria microplate, which lies between the eastern and western branches of the Rift, was found to be rotating counterclockwise for the last two years with respect to the African Plate—the major tectonic plate constituting most of the African continent. This microplate was found to rotate in the opposite direction to all the other neighboring microplates in the region.
While this gives researchers new insight into the splitting process of the East Africa Rift system, the “Y” shaped end of the rift at the Afar region is getting more attention, as to where an ocean will likely be formed if the splits continue. The “Y” shaped junction is where the African, Somalian, and Arabian tectonic plates meet near Djibouti and Eritrea and it is associated with active volcanos including the Erta Ale volcano.
NASA
Colored digital elevation model showing tectonic plate boundaries, outlines of the elevation highs demonstrating the thermal bulges and large lakes of East Africa.
Researchers believe the volcanic activity in the region suggests a rift-to-ridge transition. The Erta Ale has been erupting constantly for over 50 years and it is believed that as the Erta Ale continues to erupt, a new narrow ocean basin with its mid-ocean ridge will be formed.
However, researchers are uncertain about the future of the East African rift—whether the split will continue and an ocean will eventually be formed. At the rate at which the Afar rift is splitting, it will take tens of million years for an ocean to eventually be formed.
https://qz.com/africa/1891403/africa-is ... yptr=yahoo
How to Turn Seawater Into Fresh Water Using Sunlight
Caroline Delbert
Popular Mechanics August 14, 2020, 1:03 PM CDT
A new solar-charged ion sponge takes brackish water into the fresh zone for improved desalination.
Solar water purification is a huge research area, with different required energy loads.
The filter sponge is a metal-organic framework with extremely high surface area.
As part of a wave of solar water purifier research, scientists say they can turn even brackish groundwater into drinkable fresh water in about 30 minutes. The filtration uses a metal-organic framework, or MOF, which is a highly porous polymer made by combining metal particles with “coordinating” organic pieces called ligands. It can (and must!) be used in the sun, making it ideal for many applications in situ near sources of brackish water.
The new MOF material is charged in the sun for just a few minutes, which resets the structure of the charged ions in the material, preparing them to absorb the salt and other particulate from a quantity of brackish water. An MOF has a structure like chamois or even florist’s foam, with one of the highest proportions of surface area of any known material. The particulate is attracted to and then snared in the MOF. Afterward, in the sun, the material “releases” the captured salts.
“Saltwater” can loosely describe anything from a little salty to the Dead Sea, but brackish is a term of art for the dissolved solids range between fresh and seawater. That includes much of the world’s groundwater, many rivers and other freshwater bodies, and even seawater that has passed through another filtration method already. Brackish water is often used like nature’s “gray water,” to use the home recycling term—it’s a great coolant, for example, but not safe to consume.
In their study, the researchers took samples of brackish water that registered at over 2,000 parts per million (PPM) of contamination and detritus in the form of dissolved solids. After half an hour, the PPM was down to less than 500, which is within the definition of “fresh water.” The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says the ocean is generally about 3.5 percent saline, meaning 35 parts per thousand or 35,000 PPM.
How does the MOF ion sponge only attract impurities? Well, the molar mass of sodium and chloride, whose ions make up the vast majority of salts in the ocean, are in the 20s and 30s compared with water at just 18. Water always contains ions because of the way it crashes together and molecularly rearranges in liquid form, but this is less than of the specifically charged salt ions—and why saltwater conducts electricity far better than pure water.
Our Favorite Camping Water Filters
The researchers say one reason their new technology is important is because it only requires a small amount of sunlight rather than the amount of energy required to evaporate water. While solar energy is “free,” in a sense, we’re in a golden age of research that seeks to make more energy-dense solar applications, whether that’s more efficient solar cell materials or systems that use gravity to boost passthrough.
And while we tend to think of filtration as passive—pouring water over a filter, for example, or letting it evaporate and be captured—the MOF sponge in this work is different. It attracts and catches the particulate by design, with a chemical nature activated in one way in the dark and in another way in the sunlight.
“This work opens up a new direction for designing stimuli-responsive materials for energy-efficient and sustainable desalination and water purification,” the researchers conclude.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/tu ... 00224.html
Caroline Delbert
Popular Mechanics August 14, 2020, 1:03 PM CDT
A new solar-charged ion sponge takes brackish water into the fresh zone for improved desalination.
Solar water purification is a huge research area, with different required energy loads.
The filter sponge is a metal-organic framework with extremely high surface area.
As part of a wave of solar water purifier research, scientists say they can turn even brackish groundwater into drinkable fresh water in about 30 minutes. The filtration uses a metal-organic framework, or MOF, which is a highly porous polymer made by combining metal particles with “coordinating” organic pieces called ligands. It can (and must!) be used in the sun, making it ideal for many applications in situ near sources of brackish water.
The new MOF material is charged in the sun for just a few minutes, which resets the structure of the charged ions in the material, preparing them to absorb the salt and other particulate from a quantity of brackish water. An MOF has a structure like chamois or even florist’s foam, with one of the highest proportions of surface area of any known material. The particulate is attracted to and then snared in the MOF. Afterward, in the sun, the material “releases” the captured salts.
“Saltwater” can loosely describe anything from a little salty to the Dead Sea, but brackish is a term of art for the dissolved solids range between fresh and seawater. That includes much of the world’s groundwater, many rivers and other freshwater bodies, and even seawater that has passed through another filtration method already. Brackish water is often used like nature’s “gray water,” to use the home recycling term—it’s a great coolant, for example, but not safe to consume.
In their study, the researchers took samples of brackish water that registered at over 2,000 parts per million (PPM) of contamination and detritus in the form of dissolved solids. After half an hour, the PPM was down to less than 500, which is within the definition of “fresh water.” The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says the ocean is generally about 3.5 percent saline, meaning 35 parts per thousand or 35,000 PPM.
How does the MOF ion sponge only attract impurities? Well, the molar mass of sodium and chloride, whose ions make up the vast majority of salts in the ocean, are in the 20s and 30s compared with water at just 18. Water always contains ions because of the way it crashes together and molecularly rearranges in liquid form, but this is less than of the specifically charged salt ions—and why saltwater conducts electricity far better than pure water.
Our Favorite Camping Water Filters
The researchers say one reason their new technology is important is because it only requires a small amount of sunlight rather than the amount of energy required to evaporate water. While solar energy is “free,” in a sense, we’re in a golden age of research that seeks to make more energy-dense solar applications, whether that’s more efficient solar cell materials or systems that use gravity to boost passthrough.
And while we tend to think of filtration as passive—pouring water over a filter, for example, or letting it evaporate and be captured—the MOF sponge in this work is different. It attracts and catches the particulate by design, with a chemical nature activated in one way in the dark and in another way in the sunlight.
“This work opens up a new direction for designing stimuli-responsive materials for energy-efficient and sustainable desalination and water purification,” the researchers conclude.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/tu ... 00224.html
These Scientists Are Giving Themselves D.I.Y. Coronavirus Vaccines
Impatient for a coronavirus vaccine, dozens of scientists around the world are giving themselves — and sometimes, friends and family — their own unproven versions.
In April, more than three months before any coronavirus vaccine would enter large clinical trials, the mayor of a picturesque island town in the Pacific Northwest invited a microbiologist friend to vaccinate him.
The exchange occurred on the mayor’s Facebook page, to the horror of several Friday Harbor residents following it.
“Should I pop up and get your vaccine started?????,” wrote Johnny Stine, who runs North Coast Biologics, a Seattle biotech company with a focus on antibodies. “Don’t worry — I’m immune — I have boosted myself five times with my vaccine.”
“Sounds good,” Farhad Ghatan, the mayor, wrote after a few follow-up questions.
Several residents interjected skepticism in the exchange. They were swatted down by the mayor, who defended his friend of 25 years as a “pharmaceutical scientist on the forefront.” When residents raised additional concerns — about Mr. Stine’s credentials and the unfairness of encouraging him to visit San Juan Island despite travel restrictions — Mr. Stine lobbed back vulgar insults. (The geekiest and least R-rated: “I hope your lung epithelial cells over express ACE2 so you die more expeditiously from nCoV19.”)
Several residents reported all of this to a variety of law enforcement and regulatory agencies. In June, the Washington attorney general filed a lawsuit against Mr. Stine not only for pitching the mayor with unsupported claims, but also for administering his unproven vaccine to about 30 people, charging each $400. In May, the Food and Drug Administration sent a letter warning Mr. Stine to stop “misleadingly” representing his product.
Although his promotional tactics were unusual, Mr. Stine was far from the only scientist creating experimental coronavirus vaccines for themselves, family, friends and other interested parties. Dozens of scientists around the world have done it, with wildly varying methods, affiliations and claims.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/01/scie ... 778d3e6de3
Impatient for a coronavirus vaccine, dozens of scientists around the world are giving themselves — and sometimes, friends and family — their own unproven versions.
In April, more than three months before any coronavirus vaccine would enter large clinical trials, the mayor of a picturesque island town in the Pacific Northwest invited a microbiologist friend to vaccinate him.
The exchange occurred on the mayor’s Facebook page, to the horror of several Friday Harbor residents following it.
“Should I pop up and get your vaccine started?????,” wrote Johnny Stine, who runs North Coast Biologics, a Seattle biotech company with a focus on antibodies. “Don’t worry — I’m immune — I have boosted myself five times with my vaccine.”
“Sounds good,” Farhad Ghatan, the mayor, wrote after a few follow-up questions.
Several residents interjected skepticism in the exchange. They were swatted down by the mayor, who defended his friend of 25 years as a “pharmaceutical scientist on the forefront.” When residents raised additional concerns — about Mr. Stine’s credentials and the unfairness of encouraging him to visit San Juan Island despite travel restrictions — Mr. Stine lobbed back vulgar insults. (The geekiest and least R-rated: “I hope your lung epithelial cells over express ACE2 so you die more expeditiously from nCoV19.”)
Several residents reported all of this to a variety of law enforcement and regulatory agencies. In June, the Washington attorney general filed a lawsuit against Mr. Stine not only for pitching the mayor with unsupported claims, but also for administering his unproven vaccine to about 30 people, charging each $400. In May, the Food and Drug Administration sent a letter warning Mr. Stine to stop “misleadingly” representing his product.
Although his promotional tactics were unusual, Mr. Stine was far from the only scientist creating experimental coronavirus vaccines for themselves, family, friends and other interested parties. Dozens of scientists around the world have done it, with wildly varying methods, affiliations and claims.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/01/scie ... 778d3e6de3
Humans Couldn't Solve This Math Problem for 90 Years. Computers Did It in 30 Minutes.
Caroline Delbert
Popular Mechanics August 31, 2020, 8:04 AM CDT
The last dimension of Keller's conjecture has been proven using a computer algorithm.
The conjecture involves the way hypercubes in different dimensions share sides when tiled.
The proof is computerized and verified by another computer, indecipherable by humans.
Scientists have trained a computer algorithm to complete a nearly century-old math problem in a mere half hour. Keller’s conjecture, a tessellation problem about the way certain shapes tile in certain spaces, has been solved for all but seven-dimensional space. Now, the brute force of computational power has let scientists hand over the most tedious part of the job—with conclusive results that can’t be confirmed by humans. Let’s dig in.
Keller’s conjecture sounds simple: “tiling an n-dimensional space with n-dimensional hypercubes of equal size yields an arrangement in which at least two hypercubes have an entire (n-1)-dimensional ‘side’ in common.” So when your Boggle cubes settle into the little cube nests on the Boggle board, they’re flush alongside one another. The bricks in a wall end up fully touching along at least one side.
But for more dimensions, it gets complicated. The term hypercube includes the same kinds of shapes—perpendicular sided “cubes,” but raised to different spatial dimensionalities, meaning there are complexities we can’t analogize with a brick wall or Boggle anymore. This becomes messy and harder to reason through.
“In 1986 [mathematician] reduced Keller’s conjecture to the study of periodic tilings. Using this reduction [mathematicians] Corradi and Szabo introduced the Keller graphs: the graph has vertices such that a pair are adjacent if and only if they differ by exactly [one amount] in at least one coordinate and they differ in at least two coordinates,” the scientists write in their introduction.
This means the remaining problem, in seven dimensions, could be solved through what computer scientists call “brute force,” which just means a computer is able to systematically process all examples to test them for validity. In a given dimensionality, are there vertices that differ by exact one amount, with at least two other, different coordinates? Do the tiled seven-dimensional hypercubes conform to this condition?
Photo credit: David Eppstein/Creative Commons
Photo credit: David Eppstein/Creative Commons
The math sounds simple, but it’s computationally expensive—a term reflecting the way computer math can exponentially increase, very quickly, to the point that it’s impossible even for a powerful computer to do. Think of the old adage about folding paper, which becomes impossible quickly for a normal sheet of printer paper. After 10 folds, the hypothetical paper is over a thousand layers thick. Now imagine that each fold included axis values between, say, -10 and 10 only. For those 21 number line values, over seven dimensions of coordinates have almost 2 billion possible combinations.
Proving the conjecture by dimensions has revealed surprises, Quanta reports. For dimensions 1 through 6, mathematician Oskar Perron proved the conjecture in 1940. But in the 1990s, mathematicians Jeffrey Lagarias and Peter Shor proved it was not true in 10 dimensions. The nature of higher dimensions means brilliant mathematicians can find ways to shortcut having to manually solve an entire set, for example, because they can prove a smaller relationship that scales up to the entire problem.
If you have 10 chances to solve a problem, but you solve it in your first chance, why would you need to work on the other nine chances?
Only seven was left because of a funny overlap in work. “[A]fter Lagarias and Shor, the only unsettled dimensions were seven, eight and nine. In 2002, Mackey proved Keller’s conjecture false in dimension eight (and therefore also in dimension nine),” Quanta explains. “That left just dimension seven open—it was either the highest dimension where the conjecture holds or the lowest dimension where it fails.”
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/hu ... 00707.html
Caroline Delbert
Popular Mechanics August 31, 2020, 8:04 AM CDT
The last dimension of Keller's conjecture has been proven using a computer algorithm.
The conjecture involves the way hypercubes in different dimensions share sides when tiled.
The proof is computerized and verified by another computer, indecipherable by humans.
Scientists have trained a computer algorithm to complete a nearly century-old math problem in a mere half hour. Keller’s conjecture, a tessellation problem about the way certain shapes tile in certain spaces, has been solved for all but seven-dimensional space. Now, the brute force of computational power has let scientists hand over the most tedious part of the job—with conclusive results that can’t be confirmed by humans. Let’s dig in.
Keller’s conjecture sounds simple: “tiling an n-dimensional space with n-dimensional hypercubes of equal size yields an arrangement in which at least two hypercubes have an entire (n-1)-dimensional ‘side’ in common.” So when your Boggle cubes settle into the little cube nests on the Boggle board, they’re flush alongside one another. The bricks in a wall end up fully touching along at least one side.
But for more dimensions, it gets complicated. The term hypercube includes the same kinds of shapes—perpendicular sided “cubes,” but raised to different spatial dimensionalities, meaning there are complexities we can’t analogize with a brick wall or Boggle anymore. This becomes messy and harder to reason through.
“In 1986 [mathematician] reduced Keller’s conjecture to the study of periodic tilings. Using this reduction [mathematicians] Corradi and Szabo introduced the Keller graphs: the graph has vertices such that a pair are adjacent if and only if they differ by exactly [one amount] in at least one coordinate and they differ in at least two coordinates,” the scientists write in their introduction.
This means the remaining problem, in seven dimensions, could be solved through what computer scientists call “brute force,” which just means a computer is able to systematically process all examples to test them for validity. In a given dimensionality, are there vertices that differ by exact one amount, with at least two other, different coordinates? Do the tiled seven-dimensional hypercubes conform to this condition?
Photo credit: David Eppstein/Creative Commons
Photo credit: David Eppstein/Creative Commons
The math sounds simple, but it’s computationally expensive—a term reflecting the way computer math can exponentially increase, very quickly, to the point that it’s impossible even for a powerful computer to do. Think of the old adage about folding paper, which becomes impossible quickly for a normal sheet of printer paper. After 10 folds, the hypothetical paper is over a thousand layers thick. Now imagine that each fold included axis values between, say, -10 and 10 only. For those 21 number line values, over seven dimensions of coordinates have almost 2 billion possible combinations.
Proving the conjecture by dimensions has revealed surprises, Quanta reports. For dimensions 1 through 6, mathematician Oskar Perron proved the conjecture in 1940. But in the 1990s, mathematicians Jeffrey Lagarias and Peter Shor proved it was not true in 10 dimensions. The nature of higher dimensions means brilliant mathematicians can find ways to shortcut having to manually solve an entire set, for example, because they can prove a smaller relationship that scales up to the entire problem.
If you have 10 chances to solve a problem, but you solve it in your first chance, why would you need to work on the other nine chances?
Only seven was left because of a funny overlap in work. “[A]fter Lagarias and Shor, the only unsettled dimensions were seven, eight and nine. In 2002, Mackey proved Keller’s conjecture false in dimension eight (and therefore also in dimension nine),” Quanta explains. “That left just dimension seven open—it was either the highest dimension where the conjecture holds or the lowest dimension where it fails.”
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/hu ... 00707.html
Elon Musk Says Settlers Will Likely Die on Mars. He's Right.
Caroline Delbert
Popular Mechanics September 2, 2020, 2:24 PM CDT
From Popular Mechanics
At a conference Monday, Elon Musk said the first Mars settlers have a "good chance" of death.
Musk and NASA are rapidly accumulating ways to plan, consolidate, and maximize for space living.
Yes, settlers will die on Mars—hopefully after a long, satisfying life of exploration.
Earlier this week, Elon Musk said there’s a “good chance” settlers in the first Mars missions will die. And while that’s easy to imagine, he and others are working hard to plan and minimize the risk of death by hardship or accident. In fact, the goal is to have people comfortably die on Mars after a long life of work and play that, we hope, looks at least a little like life on Earth.
There are already major structural questions about how humans will settle on Mars. How will we aim Musk’s planned hundreds of Starships at Mars during the right times for the shortest, safest trips? How will a spaceship turn into something that safely lands on the planet’s surface? How will astronauts reasonably survive a years-long trip in cramped, close quarters where maximum possible volume is allotted to supplies?
And all of that is before anyone even touches the surface.
Then there are logistical reasons to talk about potential Mars settlers in, well, actuarial terms. First, the trip itself will take years based on current estimates, and applicants to settlement programs are told to expect this trip to be one way. It follows, statistically, that there’s an almost certain “chance” these settlers will die on Mars, because their lives will continue there until they naturally end. Musk is referring to accidental death in tough conditions, but people are likely to stay on Mars for the duration either way.
When Mars One opened applications in 2013, people flocked to audition to die on Mars after a one-way trip and a lifetime of settlement. As chemist and applicant Taylor Rose Nations said in a 2014 podcast episode:
“If I can go to Mars and be a human guinea pig, I’m willing to sort of donate my body to science. I feel like it’s worth it for me personally, and it’s kind of a selfish thing, but just to turn around and look and see Earth. That’s a lifelong total dream.”
Musk said in a conference Monday that building reusable rocket technology and robust, “complex life support” are his major priorities, based on his long-term goals of settling humans on Mars. Musk has successfully transported astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), where NASA and global space administrations already have long-term life support technology in place. But that’s not the same as, for example, NASA’s advanced life support projects:
“Advanced life support (ALS) technologies required for future human missions include improved physico-chemical technologies for atmosphere revitalization, water recovery, and waste processing/resource recovery; biological processors for food production; and systems modeling, analysis, and controls associated with integrated subsystems operations.”
In other words, while the ISS does many of these different functions like water recovery, people on the moon (for NASA) or Mars (for Musk’s SpaceX) will require long-term life support for the same group of people, not a group that rotates every few months with frequent short trips from Earth.
And if the Mars colony plans to endure and put down roots, that means having food, shelter, medical care, and mental and emotional stimulation for the entire population.
There must be redundancies and ways to repair everything. Researchers like 3D printers and chemical processes such as ligand bonding as they plan these hypothetical missions, because it’s more prudent to send raw materials that can be turned into 100 different things or 50 different medicines. The right chemical processes can recycle discarded items into fertilizer molecules.
“Good chance you’ll die, it’s going to be tough going,” Musk said, “but it will be pretty glorious if it works out.”
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/elo ... rs-likely-
Caroline Delbert
Popular Mechanics September 2, 2020, 2:24 PM CDT
From Popular Mechanics
At a conference Monday, Elon Musk said the first Mars settlers have a "good chance" of death.
Musk and NASA are rapidly accumulating ways to plan, consolidate, and maximize for space living.
Yes, settlers will die on Mars—hopefully after a long, satisfying life of exploration.
Earlier this week, Elon Musk said there’s a “good chance” settlers in the first Mars missions will die. And while that’s easy to imagine, he and others are working hard to plan and minimize the risk of death by hardship or accident. In fact, the goal is to have people comfortably die on Mars after a long life of work and play that, we hope, looks at least a little like life on Earth.
There are already major structural questions about how humans will settle on Mars. How will we aim Musk’s planned hundreds of Starships at Mars during the right times for the shortest, safest trips? How will a spaceship turn into something that safely lands on the planet’s surface? How will astronauts reasonably survive a years-long trip in cramped, close quarters where maximum possible volume is allotted to supplies?
And all of that is before anyone even touches the surface.
Then there are logistical reasons to talk about potential Mars settlers in, well, actuarial terms. First, the trip itself will take years based on current estimates, and applicants to settlement programs are told to expect this trip to be one way. It follows, statistically, that there’s an almost certain “chance” these settlers will die on Mars, because their lives will continue there until they naturally end. Musk is referring to accidental death in tough conditions, but people are likely to stay on Mars for the duration either way.
When Mars One opened applications in 2013, people flocked to audition to die on Mars after a one-way trip and a lifetime of settlement. As chemist and applicant Taylor Rose Nations said in a 2014 podcast episode:
“If I can go to Mars and be a human guinea pig, I’m willing to sort of donate my body to science. I feel like it’s worth it for me personally, and it’s kind of a selfish thing, but just to turn around and look and see Earth. That’s a lifelong total dream.”
Musk said in a conference Monday that building reusable rocket technology and robust, “complex life support” are his major priorities, based on his long-term goals of settling humans on Mars. Musk has successfully transported astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), where NASA and global space administrations already have long-term life support technology in place. But that’s not the same as, for example, NASA’s advanced life support projects:
“Advanced life support (ALS) technologies required for future human missions include improved physico-chemical technologies for atmosphere revitalization, water recovery, and waste processing/resource recovery; biological processors for food production; and systems modeling, analysis, and controls associated with integrated subsystems operations.”
In other words, while the ISS does many of these different functions like water recovery, people on the moon (for NASA) or Mars (for Musk’s SpaceX) will require long-term life support for the same group of people, not a group that rotates every few months with frequent short trips from Earth.
And if the Mars colony plans to endure and put down roots, that means having food, shelter, medical care, and mental and emotional stimulation for the entire population.
There must be redundancies and ways to repair everything. Researchers like 3D printers and chemical processes such as ligand bonding as they plan these hypothetical missions, because it’s more prudent to send raw materials that can be turned into 100 different things or 50 different medicines. The right chemical processes can recycle discarded items into fertilizer molecules.
“Good chance you’ll die, it’s going to be tough going,” Musk said, “but it will be pretty glorious if it works out.”
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/elo ... rs-likely-
Aided by Modern Ingenuity, a Taste of Ancient Judean Dates
The harvest of the much-extolled but long-lost Judean dates was something of a scientific miracle. The fruit sprouted from seeds 2,000 years old.
KETURA, Israel — The plump, golden-brown dates hanging in a bunch just above the sandy soil were finally ready to pick.
They had been slowly ripening in the desert heat for months. But the young tree on which they grew had a much more ancient history — sprouting from a 2,000-year-old seed retrieved from an archaeological site in the Judean wilderness.
“They are beautiful!” exclaimed Dr. Sarah Sallon with the elation of a new mother, as each date, its skin slightly wrinkled, was plucked gently off its stem at a sunbaked kibbutz in southern Israel.
They were tasty, too, with a fresh flavor that gave no hint of their two-millenium incubation period. The honey-blonde, semi-dry flesh had a fibrous, chewy texture and a subtle sweetness.
These were the much-extolled but long-lost Judean dates, and the harvest this month was hailed as a modern miracle of science.
Dr. Sallon, who researches natural medicine, had joined up with Elaine Solowey, an expert on arid agriculture, to find and germinate the ancient seeds. This harvesting of the fruit, celebrated in a small ceremony earlier this month at Kibbutz Ketura, was the culmination of their 15-year quest.
“In these troubled times of climate change, pollution and species dying out at alarming rates, to bring something back to life from dormancy is so symbolic,” Dr. Sallon said. “To pollinate and produce these incredible dates is like a beam of light in a dark time.”
Photos and more...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/07/worl ... 778d3e6de3
The harvest of the much-extolled but long-lost Judean dates was something of a scientific miracle. The fruit sprouted from seeds 2,000 years old.
KETURA, Israel — The plump, golden-brown dates hanging in a bunch just above the sandy soil were finally ready to pick.
They had been slowly ripening in the desert heat for months. But the young tree on which they grew had a much more ancient history — sprouting from a 2,000-year-old seed retrieved from an archaeological site in the Judean wilderness.
“They are beautiful!” exclaimed Dr. Sarah Sallon with the elation of a new mother, as each date, its skin slightly wrinkled, was plucked gently off its stem at a sunbaked kibbutz in southern Israel.
They were tasty, too, with a fresh flavor that gave no hint of their two-millenium incubation period. The honey-blonde, semi-dry flesh had a fibrous, chewy texture and a subtle sweetness.
These were the much-extolled but long-lost Judean dates, and the harvest this month was hailed as a modern miracle of science.
Dr. Sallon, who researches natural medicine, had joined up with Elaine Solowey, an expert on arid agriculture, to find and germinate the ancient seeds. This harvesting of the fruit, celebrated in a small ceremony earlier this month at Kibbutz Ketura, was the culmination of their 15-year quest.
“In these troubled times of climate change, pollution and species dying out at alarming rates, to bring something back to life from dormancy is so symbolic,” Dr. Sallon said. “To pollinate and produce these incredible dates is like a beam of light in a dark time.”
Photos and more...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/07/worl ... 778d3e6de3
Two Black Holes Smashed and Completely Changed What We Know About the Universe
Jennifer Leman
Popular Mechanics September 8, 2020, 7:38 AM CDT
Photo credit: CHRIS HENZE/NASA/SPL - Getty Images
Photo credit: CHRIS HENZE/NASA/SPL - Getty Images
From Popular Mechanics
Researchers have spotted the most powerful black hole merger ever recorded and unearthed evidence of a previously disputed class of black hole: intermediate-mass black holes.
The astronomers used the LIGO and Virgo observatories to analyze the gravitational waves.
The perplexing collision could be the result of a chain reaction of collisions, researchers say.
Roughly seven billion years ago, two monstrous black holes slammed together in a catastrophic celestial event so intense, it shot a pulse of gravitational waves out across the universe. Astonishingly, those gravitational waves only reached Earth one year ago, and astronomers now believe they've spotted the most powerful black hole collision yet: an event they've dubbed GW190521.
Researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the U.S. and the Virgo Observatory in Italy first detected the waves—ripples in the fabric of space-time—in May 2019. The two smashed black holes at the heart of the collision were 66 and 85 times more massive than our sun, astronomers report in two papers published last week in Physical Review Letters and The Astrophysical Journal. When they collided, they formed a gargantuan black hole approximately 142 times more massive than our sun.
Not only is this likely the most powerful explosion ever recorded, but it proves the existence of a rare class of black holes: intermediate-mass black holes. “Now we can settle the case and say that intermediate-mass black holes exist,” LIGO astrophysicist Christopher Berry of Northwestern University, told National Geographic.
A black hole 85 times the mass of our sun theoretically shouldn't exist. It doesn't pair well with the theories researchers have about how stars die. Stars that range from a few times to 60 times the mass of our sun typically burn all of their fuel and eventually collapse in on themselves, forming a "conventional" black hole.
Stars that are about 60 to 130 times more massive than our sun go out with a bang, but they usually don't become black holes. Instead, they form something called a pair-instability supernova. The heat that occurs during the star's compression is so powerful, all of the material ejected is destroyed. According to the current theory, it simply can't become a black hole. (Supermassive black holes, like the one photographed at the center of M87, form from stars millions to billions the mass of our sun.)
“A discovery like this is simultaneously disheartening and exhilarating," LIGO team member Daniel Holz, a theorist at the University of Chicago, told the New York Times. "On the one hand, one of our cherished beliefs has been proven wrong. On the other hand, here’s something new and unexpected, and now the race is on to try to figure out what is going on."
So how did this massive collision unfold? Some researchers propose the black holes that slammed into each other were primordial, meaning they've been around since shortly after the Big Bang and follow their own set of cosmic guidelines. Another theory suggests perhaps these mysterious intermediate-mass black holes formed from black hole mergers that occurred earlier.
In order for this scenario to work, location is key. When black holes collide, the gravitational waves they generate often cause them to recoil, propelling them out of their galaxy. But for these two massive black holes to meet, the galaxy in which their previous collisions occurred would have to have been incredibly crowded and had enough of a gravitation pull to keep the black holes relatively close together.
Astronomers aren't sure where the massive collision occurred. There is, however, a clue. In June, researchers at the Zwicky Transient Observatory in California spotted the flare of a quasar in roughly the same patch of sky. This bright flash could be the result of a shockwave produced by the recoiled black hole formed during the GW190521 event. But more work needs to be done to link the two phenomena.
In any case, this is a watershed moment in astrophysics. Discoveries made at the Virgo Observatory and LIGO, the twin observatories located in Washington and Louisiana, respectively, have reshaped our understanding of the universe and earned researchers there a Nobel Prize. The work done at these observatories has allowed astronomers to slowly tease out our universe's most cryptic secrets. They're not finished yet.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/tw ... 00952.html
Jennifer Leman
Popular Mechanics September 8, 2020, 7:38 AM CDT
Photo credit: CHRIS HENZE/NASA/SPL - Getty Images
Photo credit: CHRIS HENZE/NASA/SPL - Getty Images
From Popular Mechanics
Researchers have spotted the most powerful black hole merger ever recorded and unearthed evidence of a previously disputed class of black hole: intermediate-mass black holes.
The astronomers used the LIGO and Virgo observatories to analyze the gravitational waves.
The perplexing collision could be the result of a chain reaction of collisions, researchers say.
Roughly seven billion years ago, two monstrous black holes slammed together in a catastrophic celestial event so intense, it shot a pulse of gravitational waves out across the universe. Astonishingly, those gravitational waves only reached Earth one year ago, and astronomers now believe they've spotted the most powerful black hole collision yet: an event they've dubbed GW190521.
Researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the U.S. and the Virgo Observatory in Italy first detected the waves—ripples in the fabric of space-time—in May 2019. The two smashed black holes at the heart of the collision were 66 and 85 times more massive than our sun, astronomers report in two papers published last week in Physical Review Letters and The Astrophysical Journal. When they collided, they formed a gargantuan black hole approximately 142 times more massive than our sun.
Not only is this likely the most powerful explosion ever recorded, but it proves the existence of a rare class of black holes: intermediate-mass black holes. “Now we can settle the case and say that intermediate-mass black holes exist,” LIGO astrophysicist Christopher Berry of Northwestern University, told National Geographic.
A black hole 85 times the mass of our sun theoretically shouldn't exist. It doesn't pair well with the theories researchers have about how stars die. Stars that range from a few times to 60 times the mass of our sun typically burn all of their fuel and eventually collapse in on themselves, forming a "conventional" black hole.
Stars that are about 60 to 130 times more massive than our sun go out with a bang, but they usually don't become black holes. Instead, they form something called a pair-instability supernova. The heat that occurs during the star's compression is so powerful, all of the material ejected is destroyed. According to the current theory, it simply can't become a black hole. (Supermassive black holes, like the one photographed at the center of M87, form from stars millions to billions the mass of our sun.)
“A discovery like this is simultaneously disheartening and exhilarating," LIGO team member Daniel Holz, a theorist at the University of Chicago, told the New York Times. "On the one hand, one of our cherished beliefs has been proven wrong. On the other hand, here’s something new and unexpected, and now the race is on to try to figure out what is going on."
So how did this massive collision unfold? Some researchers propose the black holes that slammed into each other were primordial, meaning they've been around since shortly after the Big Bang and follow their own set of cosmic guidelines. Another theory suggests perhaps these mysterious intermediate-mass black holes formed from black hole mergers that occurred earlier.
In order for this scenario to work, location is key. When black holes collide, the gravitational waves they generate often cause them to recoil, propelling them out of their galaxy. But for these two massive black holes to meet, the galaxy in which their previous collisions occurred would have to have been incredibly crowded and had enough of a gravitation pull to keep the black holes relatively close together.
Astronomers aren't sure where the massive collision occurred. There is, however, a clue. In June, researchers at the Zwicky Transient Observatory in California spotted the flare of a quasar in roughly the same patch of sky. This bright flash could be the result of a shockwave produced by the recoiled black hole formed during the GW190521 event. But more work needs to be done to link the two phenomena.
In any case, this is a watershed moment in astrophysics. Discoveries made at the Virgo Observatory and LIGO, the twin observatories located in Washington and Louisiana, respectively, have reshaped our understanding of the universe and earned researchers there a Nobel Prize. The work done at these observatories has allowed astronomers to slowly tease out our universe's most cryptic secrets. They're not finished yet.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/tw ... 00952.html
We've Found Possible Signs of Life in Venus's Clouds.
Jennifer Leman
Popular Mechanics September 14, 2020, 6:20 PM
From Popular Mechanics
Researchers have discovered the molecule phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus.
The molecule indicates that life may exist in the acidic clouds high above our sister planet.
The discovery of phosphine in the Venusian atmosphere could signal a rejuvenated interest in the planet, which has long been ignored in favor of other locales in the solar system.
A mystery lurks in the clouds high above the stifling surface of our nearest planetary neighbor, Venus. Researchers have announced they've found traces of phosphine, a molecule potentially generated by living things, in the planet's clouds.
Planetary scientists have long speculated that Venus's cloudy atmosphere could harbor life. The surface of Venus is inhospitable, with surface temperatures exceeding 800 degrees Fahrenheit. No probe sent to the planet—and there have been several—has survived for longer than a few hours. But the planet's atmosphere, which is composed of plush layers of sulfuric acid clouds, may present a unique cradle for burgeoning lifeforms.
"We know that the molecule phosphine is a biomarker on Earth," astronomer Jane Greave, of Cardiff University in Wales, said in a pre-recorded statement released by the Royal Astronomical Society. "It's been suggested that there are possible habitats in the cloud decks of Venus, so somewhere where little lifeforms could live."
Photo credit: Popular Mechanics
Photo credit: Popular Mechanics
To be clear, this latest discovery doesn't explicitly confirm the existence of life on another world, but it's the closest we've ever come. The researchers, who published their findings today in the journals Nature Astronomy and Astrobiology, say the only explanations for the molecule are it's either being produced by a living thing, or it's generated through some chemical process currently unknown to science.
Molecule of the Moment
Phosphine (PH3) is composed of a single phosphorus atom that's been stuck atop a trio of hydrogen atoms. "I like to think of phosphine as ammonia's evil cousin," Greaves said. (Ammonia, by comparison, is made up of a nitrogen atom surrounded by three hydrogen atoms.)
Anaerobic microbes, which thrive in environments without oxygen here on Earth, also produce phosphine. "They've got a completely different way of life to much of what we're used to," Greaves said.
Scientists have yet to observe exactly how these microbes create the compound, which can also be manufactured in a laboratory. Phosphine is poisonous to many animals, and the colorless, flammable gas has been used in chemical warfare and by farmers to snuff out tenacious pests.
Scientists have discovered the molecule elsewhere in the solar system, in the cores of the planets Jupiter and Saturn. But unlike Venus, there's an explanation. The stifling heat and crushing pressure on these planets is powerful enough to slam atoms of hydrogen and phosphorus together. On Venus, however, there isn't enough heat or pressure for phosphine to form this way.
Conditions aren't so bad 31 miles above the Venusian surface. High along the cloud decks that cloak the rocky planet, temperatures hover around 86 degrees Fahrenheit. The atmospheric pressure at this altitude is similar to what we experience at Earth's surface. The only catch is the acidity; Venus's clouds are filled with sulfuric acid and create an extremely caustic environment.
But in some instances, life on Earth thrives under these conditions. Scientists have discovered microbes in rocky crevices deep below the oceans and circle geothermal pools in places like Yellowstone and Iceland. The microorganisms that produce phosphine are even found in the guts of animals like penguins, deep sea worms, and—you guessed it—humans.
Spying on the Mysterious Molecule
Photo credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
Photo credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
In order to identify the chemical makeup of distant atmospheres, scientists use radio telescopes to make observations across a wide swath of wavelengths of light. In 2017, Greaves and her team used the James Clark Maxwell radio telescope atop Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano to study chemicals in Venus' toxic atmosphere.
"If you look at a very specific wavelength, a little bit of that light is missing because the phosphine molecules have absorbed and so it's not present," Greaves said.
When Greaves discovered phosphine's signature, she reached out to researchers at MIT and, together, they used Chile's Atacama Large Millimeter Array to make additional observations in 2019. Had the novel coronavirus pandemic not struck earlier this year and largely shuttered the world's observatories, the scientists would have made additional observations.
Ultimately, the team was able to pinpoint a range of altitudes, between 32 and 37 miles above the surface, where the molecule was abundant, National Geographic reports. And it was abundant, indeed: The scientists discovered concentrations of phosphine ranging between 5 to 20 parts per billion—way more than the amount in Earth's atmosphere, and way more than the team expected to find.
Some researchers are skeptical of the findings, suggesting there could be some sort of mistake in the way that the data was collected.
“They took the right steps to verify the signal, but I’m still not convinced that this is real,” ALMA observatory scientist John Carpenter told National Geographic. “If it’s real, it’s a very cool result, but it needs follow-up to make it really convincing.” Other researchers chalk the findings up to some sort of undiscovered geochemical process.
Dreaming of Phosphine
Photo credit: American Association for the Advancement of Science
Photo credit: American Association for the Advancement of Science
That life could survive in the caustic clouds of Venus isn't a new idea.
"The conditions in the lower clouds of Venus resemble those on Earth more than any other extraterrestrial environment now known," astronomers Harold Morowitz and Carl Sagan wrote in the journal Nature in 1967. Despite Venus's potential as a cradle for life, the planet has largely been ignored perhaps, in part, due to the logistical challenges of getting there, or maybe because other destinations in the solar system—here's looking at you, Mars and Europa—have seemed more appealing.
In 1962, NASA's Mariner 2 became the first spacecraft to fly by Venus. The Soviet Union responded in kind by launching its Venera spacecraft to the planet. Venera 7 became the first spacecraft to survive a soft landing on Venus, but it melted within seconds. Venera 9 took the first image of the Venusian surface.
In 1989, NASA's Magellan spacecraft launched, eventually producing the first global map of Venus. Now, only one spacecraft, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Akatsuki orbiter, is monitoring Venus. Mars, by comparison, has eight active missions.
But NASA is currently in the process of reviewing two potential Discovery Program missions to Venus. One mission—Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy (VERITAS)—is designed to map the planet's surface in order to unearth its many geologic secrets.
The other mission, DAVINCI+, plans to study Venus's atmosphere by plunging a probe down to the planet's rocky surface. On the way down, it will collect samples of trace gases and snap pictures of both the volatile atmosphere and the rocky surface below.
“Venus is the key to understanding how Earth-size planets evolve," Martha Gilmore, an astronomer at Wesleyan University and a co-developer of both projects, said in a February press statement. "Like Earth, we predict Venus had an ocean that may have lasted for billions of years. Like Earth, Venus may be volcanically and tectonically active today."
The two missions "will target the modern and ancient history of Venus, as recorded in the rocks and the atmosphere," Gilmore said. While Mars has spent decades in the spotlight, Venus's time to shine may not be far behind.
The Indian Space Research Organization announced two years ago that it also plans to launch a mission to Venus in the coming years. Meanwhile, Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck has openly discussed his company's plans to send a private research mission to Venus.
"The biggest question that I can possibly think of to try and and answer is: Is life on Earth unique or is prolific throughout the universe?" Beck said in an interview on the Orbital Mechanics podcast. "If you could find life in the clouds of Venus, then you would gravitate to the natural assumption that actually life is prolific."
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/tech/m/ ... g-its.html
Jennifer Leman
Popular Mechanics September 14, 2020, 6:20 PM
From Popular Mechanics
Researchers have discovered the molecule phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus.
The molecule indicates that life may exist in the acidic clouds high above our sister planet.
The discovery of phosphine in the Venusian atmosphere could signal a rejuvenated interest in the planet, which has long been ignored in favor of other locales in the solar system.
A mystery lurks in the clouds high above the stifling surface of our nearest planetary neighbor, Venus. Researchers have announced they've found traces of phosphine, a molecule potentially generated by living things, in the planet's clouds.
Planetary scientists have long speculated that Venus's cloudy atmosphere could harbor life. The surface of Venus is inhospitable, with surface temperatures exceeding 800 degrees Fahrenheit. No probe sent to the planet—and there have been several—has survived for longer than a few hours. But the planet's atmosphere, which is composed of plush layers of sulfuric acid clouds, may present a unique cradle for burgeoning lifeforms.
"We know that the molecule phosphine is a biomarker on Earth," astronomer Jane Greave, of Cardiff University in Wales, said in a pre-recorded statement released by the Royal Astronomical Society. "It's been suggested that there are possible habitats in the cloud decks of Venus, so somewhere where little lifeforms could live."
Photo credit: Popular Mechanics
Photo credit: Popular Mechanics
To be clear, this latest discovery doesn't explicitly confirm the existence of life on another world, but it's the closest we've ever come. The researchers, who published their findings today in the journals Nature Astronomy and Astrobiology, say the only explanations for the molecule are it's either being produced by a living thing, or it's generated through some chemical process currently unknown to science.
Molecule of the Moment
Phosphine (PH3) is composed of a single phosphorus atom that's been stuck atop a trio of hydrogen atoms. "I like to think of phosphine as ammonia's evil cousin," Greaves said. (Ammonia, by comparison, is made up of a nitrogen atom surrounded by three hydrogen atoms.)
Anaerobic microbes, which thrive in environments without oxygen here on Earth, also produce phosphine. "They've got a completely different way of life to much of what we're used to," Greaves said.
Scientists have yet to observe exactly how these microbes create the compound, which can also be manufactured in a laboratory. Phosphine is poisonous to many animals, and the colorless, flammable gas has been used in chemical warfare and by farmers to snuff out tenacious pests.
Scientists have discovered the molecule elsewhere in the solar system, in the cores of the planets Jupiter and Saturn. But unlike Venus, there's an explanation. The stifling heat and crushing pressure on these planets is powerful enough to slam atoms of hydrogen and phosphorus together. On Venus, however, there isn't enough heat or pressure for phosphine to form this way.
Conditions aren't so bad 31 miles above the Venusian surface. High along the cloud decks that cloak the rocky planet, temperatures hover around 86 degrees Fahrenheit. The atmospheric pressure at this altitude is similar to what we experience at Earth's surface. The only catch is the acidity; Venus's clouds are filled with sulfuric acid and create an extremely caustic environment.
But in some instances, life on Earth thrives under these conditions. Scientists have discovered microbes in rocky crevices deep below the oceans and circle geothermal pools in places like Yellowstone and Iceland. The microorganisms that produce phosphine are even found in the guts of animals like penguins, deep sea worms, and—you guessed it—humans.
Spying on the Mysterious Molecule
Photo credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
Photo credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
In order to identify the chemical makeup of distant atmospheres, scientists use radio telescopes to make observations across a wide swath of wavelengths of light. In 2017, Greaves and her team used the James Clark Maxwell radio telescope atop Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano to study chemicals in Venus' toxic atmosphere.
"If you look at a very specific wavelength, a little bit of that light is missing because the phosphine molecules have absorbed and so it's not present," Greaves said.
When Greaves discovered phosphine's signature, she reached out to researchers at MIT and, together, they used Chile's Atacama Large Millimeter Array to make additional observations in 2019. Had the novel coronavirus pandemic not struck earlier this year and largely shuttered the world's observatories, the scientists would have made additional observations.
Ultimately, the team was able to pinpoint a range of altitudes, between 32 and 37 miles above the surface, where the molecule was abundant, National Geographic reports. And it was abundant, indeed: The scientists discovered concentrations of phosphine ranging between 5 to 20 parts per billion—way more than the amount in Earth's atmosphere, and way more than the team expected to find.
Some researchers are skeptical of the findings, suggesting there could be some sort of mistake in the way that the data was collected.
“They took the right steps to verify the signal, but I’m still not convinced that this is real,” ALMA observatory scientist John Carpenter told National Geographic. “If it’s real, it’s a very cool result, but it needs follow-up to make it really convincing.” Other researchers chalk the findings up to some sort of undiscovered geochemical process.
Dreaming of Phosphine
Photo credit: American Association for the Advancement of Science
Photo credit: American Association for the Advancement of Science
That life could survive in the caustic clouds of Venus isn't a new idea.
"The conditions in the lower clouds of Venus resemble those on Earth more than any other extraterrestrial environment now known," astronomers Harold Morowitz and Carl Sagan wrote in the journal Nature in 1967. Despite Venus's potential as a cradle for life, the planet has largely been ignored perhaps, in part, due to the logistical challenges of getting there, or maybe because other destinations in the solar system—here's looking at you, Mars and Europa—have seemed more appealing.
In 1962, NASA's Mariner 2 became the first spacecraft to fly by Venus. The Soviet Union responded in kind by launching its Venera spacecraft to the planet. Venera 7 became the first spacecraft to survive a soft landing on Venus, but it melted within seconds. Venera 9 took the first image of the Venusian surface.
In 1989, NASA's Magellan spacecraft launched, eventually producing the first global map of Venus. Now, only one spacecraft, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Akatsuki orbiter, is monitoring Venus. Mars, by comparison, has eight active missions.
But NASA is currently in the process of reviewing two potential Discovery Program missions to Venus. One mission—Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy (VERITAS)—is designed to map the planet's surface in order to unearth its many geologic secrets.
The other mission, DAVINCI+, plans to study Venus's atmosphere by plunging a probe down to the planet's rocky surface. On the way down, it will collect samples of trace gases and snap pictures of both the volatile atmosphere and the rocky surface below.
“Venus is the key to understanding how Earth-size planets evolve," Martha Gilmore, an astronomer at Wesleyan University and a co-developer of both projects, said in a February press statement. "Like Earth, we predict Venus had an ocean that may have lasted for billions of years. Like Earth, Venus may be volcanically and tectonically active today."
The two missions "will target the modern and ancient history of Venus, as recorded in the rocks and the atmosphere," Gilmore said. While Mars has spent decades in the spotlight, Venus's time to shine may not be far behind.
The Indian Space Research Organization announced two years ago that it also plans to launch a mission to Venus in the coming years. Meanwhile, Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck has openly discussed his company's plans to send a private research mission to Venus.
"The biggest question that I can possibly think of to try and and answer is: Is life on Earth unique or is prolific throughout the universe?" Beck said in an interview on the Orbital Mechanics podcast. "If you could find life in the clouds of Venus, then you would gravitate to the natural assumption that actually life is prolific."
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/tech/m/ ... g-its.html
Two Gigantic Antarctic Glaciers Are Breaking Free, Which Is Not Great
Caroline Delbert
Popular Mechanics Wed, September 16, 2020, 2:03 PM CDT
Photo credit: Universal History Archive - Getty Images
Photo credit: Universal History Archive - Getty Images
Just like you, glaciers are feeling the stress, growing more brittle, and starting to crack.
Melting glaciers raise the sea level and release a whole host of creepy crawlies.
Scientists combined observed data with powerful software modeling to run this simulation.
Two highly stressed and massive glaciers in Antarctica have “broken free” of some of their naturally grounded restraints, scientists say. If the glaciers continue to meander and shed ice volume, the melting could raise the sea level by as much as 10 feet. That could cover most of the Netherlands or the whole city of New Orleans, not to mention cause coastal creep around the entire world.
First, let’s look at what’s actually happening with these glaciers. Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers are huge, although they aren't biggest in the world—those glaciers are mostly on continental landmass that includes mountain ranges. That means they’re naturally hemmed in by slopes and valleys. Ice flow (not to be confused with ice floe) will continue to spread if not confined or held in place.
On the Antarctic ice mass, glaciers are held in place by friction and much smaller anchors to the underlying landmass. It’s this fragile juncture that has broken apart for Pine Island and Thwaites. In their new paper, researchers explain how this has happened.
Think of the moment in Titanic where one of the ship’s four iconic stacks breaks from its supporting wires: one snaps and increases the burden on the rest, causing a snowball effect as more and more wires snap. In the Antarctic glaciers, “shear zones” are where the glaciers are held in place and where the most tension plays out:
“These damage areas consist of highly crevassed areas and open fractures and are first signs that the shear zones of both ice shelves have structurally weakened over the past decade. [T]he damage initiates a feedback process where initial ice shelf weakening triggers the development of damage in their shear zones, which results in further speedup, shearing, and weakening, hence promoting additional damage development. This damage feedback potentially preconditions these ice shelves for disintegration and enhances grounding line retreat.”
This means scientists are using GPS photography and mechanical models to study the way the very first cracks create weaknesses that fuel further cracks. To study how this is working in Pine Island and Thwaites, the researchers combined existing recorded observations with software that models how ice behaves. That includes the simple physics of forces like friction and shear, as well as fracture mechanics for the ice itself.
If these two glaciers alone end up in the open sea and eventually melt, they could add 10 feet to the global sea level singlehandedly. As an example, that means that while the Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville restaurants in Times Square or at Niagara Falls are safe, the ones in Key West and Biloxi are fully submerged. You can look at U.S. coastlines using the NOAA’s interactive Sea Level Rise Viewer.
Photo credit: NASA
Photo credit: NASA
Preventing this damage, or understanding the extent of it, is therefore tantamount in a world facing immense climate challenges. In this research, the BISICLES model (see what they did there?) combines all the glacial melt factors and then simulates them over a 100-year period. The researchers acknowledge they used an “idealized” model even more than this kind of simulation necessarily does:
“We deliberately opted for such an idealized model setup to prevent shortcomings due to unknown initial conditions of the ice shelf that could obliterate the mechanisms at work. As such, the setup leads to a greater control over the experiment to delineate the impact of damage adjacent to ice shelf weakening due to subshelf melt. t enables us to comprehend the physical mechanism at work in conjunction with observed features.”
This means the scientists minimized their unknown and beginning conditions in order to closely examine the phenomenon they’re looking for—the effects that lead to larger crevasses and bigger fractures in the shear zone.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/finance ... 00161.html
Caroline Delbert
Popular Mechanics Wed, September 16, 2020, 2:03 PM CDT
Photo credit: Universal History Archive - Getty Images
Photo credit: Universal History Archive - Getty Images
Just like you, glaciers are feeling the stress, growing more brittle, and starting to crack.
Melting glaciers raise the sea level and release a whole host of creepy crawlies.
Scientists combined observed data with powerful software modeling to run this simulation.
Two highly stressed and massive glaciers in Antarctica have “broken free” of some of their naturally grounded restraints, scientists say. If the glaciers continue to meander and shed ice volume, the melting could raise the sea level by as much as 10 feet. That could cover most of the Netherlands or the whole city of New Orleans, not to mention cause coastal creep around the entire world.
First, let’s look at what’s actually happening with these glaciers. Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers are huge, although they aren't biggest in the world—those glaciers are mostly on continental landmass that includes mountain ranges. That means they’re naturally hemmed in by slopes and valleys. Ice flow (not to be confused with ice floe) will continue to spread if not confined or held in place.
On the Antarctic ice mass, glaciers are held in place by friction and much smaller anchors to the underlying landmass. It’s this fragile juncture that has broken apart for Pine Island and Thwaites. In their new paper, researchers explain how this has happened.
Think of the moment in Titanic where one of the ship’s four iconic stacks breaks from its supporting wires: one snaps and increases the burden on the rest, causing a snowball effect as more and more wires snap. In the Antarctic glaciers, “shear zones” are where the glaciers are held in place and where the most tension plays out:
“These damage areas consist of highly crevassed areas and open fractures and are first signs that the shear zones of both ice shelves have structurally weakened over the past decade. [T]he damage initiates a feedback process where initial ice shelf weakening triggers the development of damage in their shear zones, which results in further speedup, shearing, and weakening, hence promoting additional damage development. This damage feedback potentially preconditions these ice shelves for disintegration and enhances grounding line retreat.”
This means scientists are using GPS photography and mechanical models to study the way the very first cracks create weaknesses that fuel further cracks. To study how this is working in Pine Island and Thwaites, the researchers combined existing recorded observations with software that models how ice behaves. That includes the simple physics of forces like friction and shear, as well as fracture mechanics for the ice itself.
If these two glaciers alone end up in the open sea and eventually melt, they could add 10 feet to the global sea level singlehandedly. As an example, that means that while the Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville restaurants in Times Square or at Niagara Falls are safe, the ones in Key West and Biloxi are fully submerged. You can look at U.S. coastlines using the NOAA’s interactive Sea Level Rise Viewer.
Photo credit: NASA
Photo credit: NASA
Preventing this damage, or understanding the extent of it, is therefore tantamount in a world facing immense climate challenges. In this research, the BISICLES model (see what they did there?) combines all the glacial melt factors and then simulates them over a 100-year period. The researchers acknowledge they used an “idealized” model even more than this kind of simulation necessarily does:
“We deliberately opted for such an idealized model setup to prevent shortcomings due to unknown initial conditions of the ice shelf that could obliterate the mechanisms at work. As such, the setup leads to a greater control over the experiment to delineate the impact of damage adjacent to ice shelf weakening due to subshelf melt. t enables us to comprehend the physical mechanism at work in conjunction with observed features.”
This means the scientists minimized their unknown and beginning conditions in order to closely examine the phenomenon they’re looking for—the effects that lead to larger crevasses and bigger fractures in the shear zone.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/finance ... 00161.html
What dreams are made of: Scientists discover true purpose of why we, and other animals, need to sleep
21 Sep, 2020 12:34
A team of scientists has discovered a dramatic change in the purpose of sleep, which takes place when humans reach roughly two-and-a-half years of age, switching from rapid growth to a permanent damage-control function.
Before this milestone, the brain grows very rapidly, making use of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep to build and strengthen synapses, the connections between neurons in our brains, as babies learn at an extraordinary rate.
Once the two-and-a-half-year threshold is passed, however, the researchers now say that sleep's primary function permanently switches to one of maintenance and repair.
All animals experience ongoing background brain damage as a simple consequence of being alive. This low-level degradation results in debris, in the form of damaged genes and proteins, which can accumulate over time and cause brain disease in later life.
Sleep is the necessary mechanism used to help clear this debris out and nearly all of this maintenance occurs during sleep, according to senior author Van Savage and the team of boffins from the University of California, Los Angeles.
“I was shocked how huge a change this is over a short period of time, and that this switch occurs when we’re so young,” Savage said. “It’s a transition that is analogous to when water freezes to ice.”
Savage and a cross-disciplinary team of neuroscientists, biologists, statisticians and physicists took data from over 60 sleep studies involving both humans and other mammals and examined the impact of factors such as total sleep time, total REM sleep time, the brain’s metabolic rate, and brain size relative to body size.
Their findings were published in the journal Science Advances.
The team collected all the data from each of the 60 studies and used it to build and test a mathematical model to examine the function of sleep over time and the changes that take place therein.
Across all species tested, including rabbits, rats and pigs, the results were uniform: a dramatic decline in REM sleep when they reached the developmental age equivalent of two-and-a-half human years.
The researchers noted an inverse relationship between brain growth and the amount of REM sleep; as we age and our brains develop, we get less and less REM sleep.
For example, in newborns, roughly 50 percent of their sleep is REM sleep, which facilitates extraordinarily fast brain growth. However, in 10 year-olds, REM sleep drops to roughly 25 percent of total sleep, whereas in adults over 50, this drops to just 15 percent of sleeping time.
“I fought sleep and pulled all-nighters when I was in college, and now think that was a mistake,” Savage said. “I would have been better off with a good night’s sleep. Now when I feel tired, I don’t have any guilt about sleeping.”
The researchers advocate sleeping when needed, to stave off potential problems with brain disorders in later life such as dementia and other cognitive disorders, diabetes, and obesity, among others.
However, some have expressed a degree of skepticism about the fresh research. Jerome Siegel, who studies REM sleep in mammals and was not involved in the research, argues that the UCLA-led team failed to consider factors such as day length, diet and climate, all of which can impact the sleep patterns of humans and other mammals, disputing the accuracy of the study’s findings, citing a dearth of more complete data.
https://www.rt.com/news/501268-sleep-pu ... led-study/
21 Sep, 2020 12:34
A team of scientists has discovered a dramatic change in the purpose of sleep, which takes place when humans reach roughly two-and-a-half years of age, switching from rapid growth to a permanent damage-control function.
Before this milestone, the brain grows very rapidly, making use of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep to build and strengthen synapses, the connections between neurons in our brains, as babies learn at an extraordinary rate.
Once the two-and-a-half-year threshold is passed, however, the researchers now say that sleep's primary function permanently switches to one of maintenance and repair.
All animals experience ongoing background brain damage as a simple consequence of being alive. This low-level degradation results in debris, in the form of damaged genes and proteins, which can accumulate over time and cause brain disease in later life.
Sleep is the necessary mechanism used to help clear this debris out and nearly all of this maintenance occurs during sleep, according to senior author Van Savage and the team of boffins from the University of California, Los Angeles.
“I was shocked how huge a change this is over a short period of time, and that this switch occurs when we’re so young,” Savage said. “It’s a transition that is analogous to when water freezes to ice.”
Savage and a cross-disciplinary team of neuroscientists, biologists, statisticians and physicists took data from over 60 sleep studies involving both humans and other mammals and examined the impact of factors such as total sleep time, total REM sleep time, the brain’s metabolic rate, and brain size relative to body size.
Their findings were published in the journal Science Advances.
The team collected all the data from each of the 60 studies and used it to build and test a mathematical model to examine the function of sleep over time and the changes that take place therein.
Across all species tested, including rabbits, rats and pigs, the results were uniform: a dramatic decline in REM sleep when they reached the developmental age equivalent of two-and-a-half human years.
The researchers noted an inverse relationship between brain growth and the amount of REM sleep; as we age and our brains develop, we get less and less REM sleep.
For example, in newborns, roughly 50 percent of their sleep is REM sleep, which facilitates extraordinarily fast brain growth. However, in 10 year-olds, REM sleep drops to roughly 25 percent of total sleep, whereas in adults over 50, this drops to just 15 percent of sleeping time.
“I fought sleep and pulled all-nighters when I was in college, and now think that was a mistake,” Savage said. “I would have been better off with a good night’s sleep. Now when I feel tired, I don’t have any guilt about sleeping.”
The researchers advocate sleeping when needed, to stave off potential problems with brain disorders in later life such as dementia and other cognitive disorders, diabetes, and obesity, among others.
However, some have expressed a degree of skepticism about the fresh research. Jerome Siegel, who studies REM sleep in mammals and was not involved in the research, argues that the UCLA-led team failed to consider factors such as day length, diet and climate, all of which can impact the sleep patterns of humans and other mammals, disputing the accuracy of the study’s findings, citing a dearth of more complete data.
https://www.rt.com/news/501268-sleep-pu ... led-study/
Scientists spot MONSTER black hole with 6 entire GALAXIES trapped in its gravity well
2 Oct, 2020 16:15
Six galaxies have been revealed to be trapped in a supermassive black hole that formed less than one billion years after the Big Bang, shedding light on how some of the largest structures in the universe are brought into being.
In research published on Thursday, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) detailed the discovery of a truly gargantuan black hole, roughly one billion times the mass of our sun, and how it managed to capture entire galaxies of planets and stars.
The black hole, and the disc of matter around it is collectively known as quasar SDSS J103027.09+052455.0.
Marco Mignoli, an astronomer at the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Bologna who led the research, compared the way in which the black hole managed to ensnare these six galaxies to a spider's web, made up of “cosmic filaments” of gas and dark matter.
The cosmic web filaments are like spider's web threads ... The galaxies stand and grow where the filaments cross, and streams of gas – available to fuel both the galaxies and the central supermassive black hole – can flow along the filaments.
The earliest black holes in the Universe are thought to have formed from the collapse of the first stars, but doubt remains over how they eventually grew to such truly incomprehensibly large sizes.
Astronomers reveal 'surprising' massive cluster of 'ancient' stars at the heart of our galaxy
The researchers postulate that the filament “web” may have formed with the assistance of enigmatic dark matter, which is theorized to have drawn large volumes of gas together during the earliest ages of the universe.
This particular “web” is over 300 times the size of the Milky Way, and there are likely many more out there waiting to be explored, say the researchers.
“We believe we have just seen the tip of the iceberg, and that the few galaxies discovered so far around this supermassive black hole are only the brightest ones,” said co-author Barbara Balmaverde, an astronomer at INAF in Torino, Italy.
The discovery marks the first time such a close grouping has been seen so soon after the Big Bang and will help to improve humanity’s understanding of supermassive black holes like the one at the center of our own galaxy.
Monstrous black holes, the size of 100 billion suns, could help shed light on dark matter mystery
https://www.rt.com/news/502359-black-ho ... ack-holes/
2 Oct, 2020 16:15
Six galaxies have been revealed to be trapped in a supermassive black hole that formed less than one billion years after the Big Bang, shedding light on how some of the largest structures in the universe are brought into being.
In research published on Thursday, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) detailed the discovery of a truly gargantuan black hole, roughly one billion times the mass of our sun, and how it managed to capture entire galaxies of planets and stars.
The black hole, and the disc of matter around it is collectively known as quasar SDSS J103027.09+052455.0.
Marco Mignoli, an astronomer at the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Bologna who led the research, compared the way in which the black hole managed to ensnare these six galaxies to a spider's web, made up of “cosmic filaments” of gas and dark matter.
The cosmic web filaments are like spider's web threads ... The galaxies stand and grow where the filaments cross, and streams of gas – available to fuel both the galaxies and the central supermassive black hole – can flow along the filaments.
The earliest black holes in the Universe are thought to have formed from the collapse of the first stars, but doubt remains over how they eventually grew to such truly incomprehensibly large sizes.
Astronomers reveal 'surprising' massive cluster of 'ancient' stars at the heart of our galaxy
The researchers postulate that the filament “web” may have formed with the assistance of enigmatic dark matter, which is theorized to have drawn large volumes of gas together during the earliest ages of the universe.
This particular “web” is over 300 times the size of the Milky Way, and there are likely many more out there waiting to be explored, say the researchers.
“We believe we have just seen the tip of the iceberg, and that the few galaxies discovered so far around this supermassive black hole are only the brightest ones,” said co-author Barbara Balmaverde, an astronomer at INAF in Torino, Italy.
The discovery marks the first time such a close grouping has been seen so soon after the Big Bang and will help to improve humanity’s understanding of supermassive black holes like the one at the center of our own galaxy.
Monstrous black holes, the size of 100 billion suns, could help shed light on dark matter mystery
https://www.rt.com/news/502359-black-ho ... ack-holes/
OCTOBER 03, 2020
Unscientific science
Iftikhar U. Hyder
PHYSICIST Freeman Dyson once said: “Science is not a monolithic body of doctrine. Science is a culture, constantly growing and changing. … Science has as many competing styles as painting or poetry. The diversity of science also finds a parallel in the diversity of religion.” This diversity Dyson talked about includes many scientists whose scientific ideas reflect their beliefs, not science. Two areas in particular that encapsulate many scientists’ unscientific beliefs are the origin of the universe and of life.
Many scientists believe that everything in the universe was created from ‘nothing’ in a process called ‘inflation’ just after the Big Bang. Physicist and science fiction writer Lawrence Krauss is one of them. Eminent physicist George Ellis once said about Krauss’s book, A Universe from Nothing, “What he is presenting is not tested science. It’s a philosophical speculation, which he apparently believes is so compelling he does not have to give any specification of evidence that would confirm it is true.”
Scientists have a very good idea of what happened just after the Big Bang. But science does not explain and quite possibly cannot explain what or who initiated the process that caused the creation of the universe.
Since the Big Bang theory does not answer a number of questions about the universe, the theory of inflation, formulated by MIT’s Alan Guth in 1982, has become a sort of religion for many cosmologists. Inflation refers to a brief period at the moment of creation during which the universe expanded faster than the speed of light. Inflation helps scientists answer a lot of questions, but still leaves many unanswered. Many leading scientists do not want to ‘believe’ in inflation without much scientific evidence to support it.
What or who initiated the creation of the universe?
Princeton’s Paul Steinhardt, who made significant contributions to the theory of inflation, is now a vocal critic of it. Steinhardt has claimed that most cosmologists are uncritical believers. In an article he co-wrote in 2017, he said, “Cosmologists appear to accept at face value the proponents’ assertion that we must believe the inflationary theory because it offers the only simple explanation of the observed features of the universe.” He added that inflationary cosmology “cannot be evaluated using the scientific method”.
The reality is that inflation attempts to solve only one ‘problem’: that the observable universe appears to be created with exquisite fine-tuning for life to exist. This is not really a problem of science. Physicist David Albert says that the fundamental laws of nature “have no bearing whatsoever on questions of where the elementary stuff came from”.
Along with inflation, many physicists have propagated the multiverse hypothesis with religious zeal in recent years. According to this hypothesis, the universe we live in is just one of an innumerably large number of universes, each with its own set of laws and characteristics. This helps scientists explain why our universe is so fine-tuned for life’s existence. In essence, its proponents argue that if ‘our universe’ is just one universe in a multiverse, there is a chance that more universes may have conditions suitable for life to exist. However, they still cannot explain what or who initiated the process that created the multiverse.
Many prominent physicists believe that, since it is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of other universes besides our own, the idea of multiverse is not really science. Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder has argued that “Believing in the multiverse is logically equivalent to believing in god, therefore it’s religion, not science”.
Another issue that is embarrassing to atheists is how life began on Earth and the remarkable complexity of living organisms. Scientists know that the probability of life arising as a result of inanimate matter accidently combining in the right permutation to form the basic building blocks of life — such as amino acids, RNAs and DNA — is infinitesimally small and practically zero. Yet they continue to believe in this lucky accident.
This attitude is not very different from that of the Nobel Prize winning physiologist George Wald, who wrote candidly in 1954: “When it comes to the origin of life, we have only two possibilities as to how life arose. One is spontaneous generation arising to evolution; the other is a supernatural creative act of God. There is no third possibility. … Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved 100 years ago by Louis Pasteur, Spelazani, Reddy and others. That leads us scientifically to only one possible conclusion — that life arose as a supernatural creative act of God. … I will not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore, I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution.”
The writer is a finance professional based in the US.
Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2020
https://www.dawn.com/news/1582789/unscientific-science
Unscientific science
Iftikhar U. Hyder
PHYSICIST Freeman Dyson once said: “Science is not a monolithic body of doctrine. Science is a culture, constantly growing and changing. … Science has as many competing styles as painting or poetry. The diversity of science also finds a parallel in the diversity of religion.” This diversity Dyson talked about includes many scientists whose scientific ideas reflect their beliefs, not science. Two areas in particular that encapsulate many scientists’ unscientific beliefs are the origin of the universe and of life.
Many scientists believe that everything in the universe was created from ‘nothing’ in a process called ‘inflation’ just after the Big Bang. Physicist and science fiction writer Lawrence Krauss is one of them. Eminent physicist George Ellis once said about Krauss’s book, A Universe from Nothing, “What he is presenting is not tested science. It’s a philosophical speculation, which he apparently believes is so compelling he does not have to give any specification of evidence that would confirm it is true.”
Scientists have a very good idea of what happened just after the Big Bang. But science does not explain and quite possibly cannot explain what or who initiated the process that caused the creation of the universe.
Since the Big Bang theory does not answer a number of questions about the universe, the theory of inflation, formulated by MIT’s Alan Guth in 1982, has become a sort of religion for many cosmologists. Inflation refers to a brief period at the moment of creation during which the universe expanded faster than the speed of light. Inflation helps scientists answer a lot of questions, but still leaves many unanswered. Many leading scientists do not want to ‘believe’ in inflation without much scientific evidence to support it.
What or who initiated the creation of the universe?
Princeton’s Paul Steinhardt, who made significant contributions to the theory of inflation, is now a vocal critic of it. Steinhardt has claimed that most cosmologists are uncritical believers. In an article he co-wrote in 2017, he said, “Cosmologists appear to accept at face value the proponents’ assertion that we must believe the inflationary theory because it offers the only simple explanation of the observed features of the universe.” He added that inflationary cosmology “cannot be evaluated using the scientific method”.
The reality is that inflation attempts to solve only one ‘problem’: that the observable universe appears to be created with exquisite fine-tuning for life to exist. This is not really a problem of science. Physicist David Albert says that the fundamental laws of nature “have no bearing whatsoever on questions of where the elementary stuff came from”.
Along with inflation, many physicists have propagated the multiverse hypothesis with religious zeal in recent years. According to this hypothesis, the universe we live in is just one of an innumerably large number of universes, each with its own set of laws and characteristics. This helps scientists explain why our universe is so fine-tuned for life’s existence. In essence, its proponents argue that if ‘our universe’ is just one universe in a multiverse, there is a chance that more universes may have conditions suitable for life to exist. However, they still cannot explain what or who initiated the process that created the multiverse.
Many prominent physicists believe that, since it is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of other universes besides our own, the idea of multiverse is not really science. Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder has argued that “Believing in the multiverse is logically equivalent to believing in god, therefore it’s religion, not science”.
Another issue that is embarrassing to atheists is how life began on Earth and the remarkable complexity of living organisms. Scientists know that the probability of life arising as a result of inanimate matter accidently combining in the right permutation to form the basic building blocks of life — such as amino acids, RNAs and DNA — is infinitesimally small and practically zero. Yet they continue to believe in this lucky accident.
This attitude is not very different from that of the Nobel Prize winning physiologist George Wald, who wrote candidly in 1954: “When it comes to the origin of life, we have only two possibilities as to how life arose. One is spontaneous generation arising to evolution; the other is a supernatural creative act of God. There is no third possibility. … Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved 100 years ago by Louis Pasteur, Spelazani, Reddy and others. That leads us scientifically to only one possible conclusion — that life arose as a supernatural creative act of God. … I will not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore, I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution.”
The writer is a finance professional based in the US.
Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2020
https://www.dawn.com/news/1582789/unscientific-science
Every Penguin in the World Comes from Earth's Lost Eighth Continent
Caroline Delbert
Popular Mechanics Fri, October 2, 2020, 8:00 AM CDT
Photo credit: David Merron Photography/World Data Center for Geophysics and Marine Geology/National Geophysical Data Center, NOAA
From Popular Mechanics
The oldest known crested penguin fossils found in New Zealand point to a much older species.
Researchers love New Zealand's fossil record of penguins, including giant "monster penguins" that are almost 6 feet tall.
New Zealand is the last traces of a giant continent called Zealandia, which sank about 60 million years ago.
Researchers have found fossils they say determine almost conclusively that every penguin on Earth originally came from modern-day New Zealand. The small landmass we see today is only the topmost points of a sunken landmass once known as continental Zealandia, backnamed from the Dutch imperialist name for New Zealand: Nieuw Zeeland, not to be confused with the human-built micronation of Sealand.
Zealandia sank about 60 million years ago, meaning it stayed afloat a little longer than the dinosaurs, at least. Penguins date back to about 62 million years ago, and like the Darwinian winners they are, they traveled with the higher ground and survived the fall of Zealandia.
Today, researchers have fossils in hand that date back 3 million years and indicate a previously unknown ancient penguin species. And where penguin species now have wider beaks and jaws, this newly discovered crested penguin shows bone structure indicating a different diet.
“That deep bills arose so late in the greater than 60 million year evolutionary history of penguins suggests that dietary shifts may have occurred as wind-driven Pliocene upwelling radically restructured southern ocean ecosystems,” the researchers, from New Zealand and the U.S., explain in their paper.
Locals first found the fossils and alerted the researchers, who began to excavate and study the penguin specimens. While the specific fossils here are 3 million years old, the scientists say the body of evidence suggests their ancestors date back to that same time frame—60 million years. And even though 3 million years old sounds young compared to 60, the crested penguin fossils still have a beak that shows their different diet compared to today’s penguins.
Photo credit: Jean-Claude Stahl, R. Paul Scofield/Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Canterbury Museum
Photo credit: Jean-Claude Stahl, R. Paul Scofield/Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Canterbury Museum
The fossils are tightly dated, meaning scientists can pinpoint them to a relatively small window of time based on the rock composition surrounding them. And using a biological geography software tool called BioGeoBEARS (BEARS stands for “Bayesian Evolutionary Analysis with R Scripts,” referring to the formulae and programming language in play), these scientists have introduced the 3-million-year-old crested penguin fossil into the larger—and exclusive—evolution of original penguin species on Zealandia.
This, the researchers told Business Insider, represents a huge change from the previous “oldest” penguin fossils on record:
“[E]arlier studies had only dated the presence of crested penguins on New Zealand back about 7,000 years. The new timeline suggests the region is the penguin’s most likely place of origin.”
The finding isn't necessarily a surprise, but the fossil record is spotty in a way that means not all logically sound theses end up being substantiated by evidence. The researchers write:
“New Zealand is a globally significant hotspot for seabird diversity, but the sparse fossil record for most seabird lineages has impeded our understanding of how and when this hotspot developed.”
Because of its unique position both isolated in geography and as the remnants of an entire former continent, New Zealand has had a special ecosystem even compared with Australia’s unusual flora and fauna spread—more like Madagascar or the Galapagos.
“Our analyses provide a timeframe for recruitment of crown penguins into the New Zealand avifauna, indicating this process began in the late Neogene and was completed via multiple waves of colonizing lineages,” the researchers conclude.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/finance ... 00984.html
Caroline Delbert
Popular Mechanics Fri, October 2, 2020, 8:00 AM CDT
Photo credit: David Merron Photography/World Data Center for Geophysics and Marine Geology/National Geophysical Data Center, NOAA
From Popular Mechanics
The oldest known crested penguin fossils found in New Zealand point to a much older species.
Researchers love New Zealand's fossil record of penguins, including giant "monster penguins" that are almost 6 feet tall.
New Zealand is the last traces of a giant continent called Zealandia, which sank about 60 million years ago.
Researchers have found fossils they say determine almost conclusively that every penguin on Earth originally came from modern-day New Zealand. The small landmass we see today is only the topmost points of a sunken landmass once known as continental Zealandia, backnamed from the Dutch imperialist name for New Zealand: Nieuw Zeeland, not to be confused with the human-built micronation of Sealand.
Zealandia sank about 60 million years ago, meaning it stayed afloat a little longer than the dinosaurs, at least. Penguins date back to about 62 million years ago, and like the Darwinian winners they are, they traveled with the higher ground and survived the fall of Zealandia.
Today, researchers have fossils in hand that date back 3 million years and indicate a previously unknown ancient penguin species. And where penguin species now have wider beaks and jaws, this newly discovered crested penguin shows bone structure indicating a different diet.
“That deep bills arose so late in the greater than 60 million year evolutionary history of penguins suggests that dietary shifts may have occurred as wind-driven Pliocene upwelling radically restructured southern ocean ecosystems,” the researchers, from New Zealand and the U.S., explain in their paper.
Locals first found the fossils and alerted the researchers, who began to excavate and study the penguin specimens. While the specific fossils here are 3 million years old, the scientists say the body of evidence suggests their ancestors date back to that same time frame—60 million years. And even though 3 million years old sounds young compared to 60, the crested penguin fossils still have a beak that shows their different diet compared to today’s penguins.
Photo credit: Jean-Claude Stahl, R. Paul Scofield/Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Canterbury Museum
Photo credit: Jean-Claude Stahl, R. Paul Scofield/Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Canterbury Museum
The fossils are tightly dated, meaning scientists can pinpoint them to a relatively small window of time based on the rock composition surrounding them. And using a biological geography software tool called BioGeoBEARS (BEARS stands for “Bayesian Evolutionary Analysis with R Scripts,” referring to the formulae and programming language in play), these scientists have introduced the 3-million-year-old crested penguin fossil into the larger—and exclusive—evolution of original penguin species on Zealandia.
This, the researchers told Business Insider, represents a huge change from the previous “oldest” penguin fossils on record:
“[E]arlier studies had only dated the presence of crested penguins on New Zealand back about 7,000 years. The new timeline suggests the region is the penguin’s most likely place of origin.”
The finding isn't necessarily a surprise, but the fossil record is spotty in a way that means not all logically sound theses end up being substantiated by evidence. The researchers write:
“New Zealand is a globally significant hotspot for seabird diversity, but the sparse fossil record for most seabird lineages has impeded our understanding of how and when this hotspot developed.”
Because of its unique position both isolated in geography and as the remnants of an entire former continent, New Zealand has had a special ecosystem even compared with Australia’s unusual flora and fauna spread—more like Madagascar or the Galapagos.
“Our analyses provide a timeframe for recruitment of crown penguins into the New Zealand avifauna, indicating this process began in the late Neogene and was completed via multiple waves of colonizing lineages,” the researchers conclude.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/finance ... 00984.html
Five Questions to Ask About Pfizer’s Covid-19 Vaccine
Important scientific announcements are usually made through peer-reviewed medical research papers, not company press releases.
Pfizer’s announcement on Monday that its Covid-19 shot appears to keep nine of 10 people from getting the disease sent its stock price rocketing. Many news reports described the vaccine as if it were our deliverance from the pandemic, even though few details were released.
There was certainly something to crow about: Pfizer’s vaccine, which was developed with the German drugmaker BioNTech, consists of genetic material called mRNA encased in tiny particles that shuttle it into our cells. From there, it stimulates the immune system to make antibodies that protect against the virus. A similar strategy is employed in other leading Covid-19 vaccine candidates. If mRNA vaccines can protect against Covid-19 and, presumably, other infectious diseases, it will be a momentous piece of news.
“This is a truly historic first,” said Dr. Michael Watson, the former president of Valera, a subsidiary of Moderna, which is currently running advanced trials of its own mRNA vaccine against Covid-19. “We now have a whole new class of vaccines in our hands.”
But historically, important scientific announcements about vaccines are made through peer-reviewed medical research papers that have undergone extensive scrutiny about study design, results and assumptions, not through company press releases.
So did Pfizer’s stock deserve its double-digit percentage bump? The answers to the following five questions will help us know.
How long will the vaccine protect patients? Pfizer says that, as of last week, 94 people out of about 40,000 in the trial had gotten ill with Covid-19. While it didn’t say exactly how many of the sick had been vaccinated, the 90 percent efficacy figure suggests it was a very small number. The Pfizer announcement covers people who got two shots between July and October. But it doesn’t indicate how long protection will last or how often people might need boosters.
“It’s a reasonable bet, but still a gamble that protection for two or three months is similar to six months or a year,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the Food and Drug Administration panel that is likely to review the vaccine for approval in December. Normally, vaccines aren’t licensed until they show they can protect for a year or two.
The company did not release any safety information. To date, no serious side effects have been revealed, and most tend to occur within six weeks of a vaccination. But scientists will have to keep an eye out for rare effects such as immune enhancement, a severe illness brought on by a virus’s interaction with immune particles in some vaccinated persons, said Dr. Walt Orenstein, a professor of medicine at Emory University and former director of the immunization program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Will it protect the most vulnerable? Pfizer did not disclose what percentage of its trial volunteers are in the groups most likely to be hospitalized or to die of Covid-19 — including people over 65 and those with diabetes or obesity. This is a key point because many vaccines, particularly for influenza, may fail to protect the elderly though they protect younger people. “How representative are those 94 people of the overall population, especially those most at risk?” asked Dr. Orenstein.
Both the National Academy of Medicine and the C.D.C. have urged that older people be among the first groups to receive vaccines. It’s possible that vaccines under development by Novavax and Sanofi, which are likely to begin late-phase clinical trials later this year, may be better for the elderly, Dr. Offit noted. Those vaccines contain immune-stimulating particles like the ones contained in the Shingrix vaccine, which is highly effective in protecting older people against shingles disease.
Can it be rolled out effectively? The Pfizer vaccine, unlike others in late-stage testing, must be kept supercooled, on dry ice around 100 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, from the time it is produced until a few days before it is injected. mRNA quickly self-destructs at higher temperatures. Pfizer has devised an elaborate system to transport the vaccine by truck and specially designed cases to vaccination sites. Public health workers are being trained to handle the vaccine as we speak, but we don’t know for sure how well it will do if containers are left out in the Arizona sun too long. Mishandling the vaccine along the way from factory to patient would render it ineffective, so people who received it could think they were protected when they were not, Dr. Offit said.
Could a premature announcement hurt future vaccines? There’s no way at present to know whether the Pfizer vaccine will be the best over all or for specific age groups. But if the F.D.A. approves it quickly, that could make it harder for manufacturers of other vaccines to carry out their studies. If people are aware that an effective vaccine exists, they may decline to enter clinical trials, partly out of concern they could get a placebo and remain unprotected. Indeed, it may be unethical to use a placebo in such trials. Many vaccines will be needed in order to meet global demand for protection against Covid-19, so it’s crucial to continue additional studies.
Could the Pfizer study expedite future vaccines? Scientists are vitally interested in whether the small number who received the real vaccine but still got sick produced lower levels of antibodies than the vaccinated individuals who remained well. Blood studies of those people would help scientists learn whether there is a “correlate of protection” for Covid-19 — a level of antibodies that can predict whether someone is protected from the disease. If they had that knowledge, public health officials could determine whether other vaccines under production were effective without necessarily having to test them on tens of thousands of people.
But it’s difficult to build such road maps. Scientists have never established correlates of immunity for pertussis, for example, although vaccines have been used against those bacteria for nearly a century.
Still, this is good news, said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a former F.D.A. deputy commissioner. He said: “I hope this makes people realize that we’re not stuck in this situation forever. There’s hope coming, whether it’s this vaccine or another.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Important scientific announcements are usually made through peer-reviewed medical research papers, not company press releases.
Pfizer’s announcement on Monday that its Covid-19 shot appears to keep nine of 10 people from getting the disease sent its stock price rocketing. Many news reports described the vaccine as if it were our deliverance from the pandemic, even though few details were released.
There was certainly something to crow about: Pfizer’s vaccine, which was developed with the German drugmaker BioNTech, consists of genetic material called mRNA encased in tiny particles that shuttle it into our cells. From there, it stimulates the immune system to make antibodies that protect against the virus. A similar strategy is employed in other leading Covid-19 vaccine candidates. If mRNA vaccines can protect against Covid-19 and, presumably, other infectious diseases, it will be a momentous piece of news.
“This is a truly historic first,” said Dr. Michael Watson, the former president of Valera, a subsidiary of Moderna, which is currently running advanced trials of its own mRNA vaccine against Covid-19. “We now have a whole new class of vaccines in our hands.”
But historically, important scientific announcements about vaccines are made through peer-reviewed medical research papers that have undergone extensive scrutiny about study design, results and assumptions, not through company press releases.
So did Pfizer’s stock deserve its double-digit percentage bump? The answers to the following five questions will help us know.
How long will the vaccine protect patients? Pfizer says that, as of last week, 94 people out of about 40,000 in the trial had gotten ill with Covid-19. While it didn’t say exactly how many of the sick had been vaccinated, the 90 percent efficacy figure suggests it was a very small number. The Pfizer announcement covers people who got two shots between July and October. But it doesn’t indicate how long protection will last or how often people might need boosters.
“It’s a reasonable bet, but still a gamble that protection for two or three months is similar to six months or a year,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the Food and Drug Administration panel that is likely to review the vaccine for approval in December. Normally, vaccines aren’t licensed until they show they can protect for a year or two.
The company did not release any safety information. To date, no serious side effects have been revealed, and most tend to occur within six weeks of a vaccination. But scientists will have to keep an eye out for rare effects such as immune enhancement, a severe illness brought on by a virus’s interaction with immune particles in some vaccinated persons, said Dr. Walt Orenstein, a professor of medicine at Emory University and former director of the immunization program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Will it protect the most vulnerable? Pfizer did not disclose what percentage of its trial volunteers are in the groups most likely to be hospitalized or to die of Covid-19 — including people over 65 and those with diabetes or obesity. This is a key point because many vaccines, particularly for influenza, may fail to protect the elderly though they protect younger people. “How representative are those 94 people of the overall population, especially those most at risk?” asked Dr. Orenstein.
Both the National Academy of Medicine and the C.D.C. have urged that older people be among the first groups to receive vaccines. It’s possible that vaccines under development by Novavax and Sanofi, which are likely to begin late-phase clinical trials later this year, may be better for the elderly, Dr. Offit noted. Those vaccines contain immune-stimulating particles like the ones contained in the Shingrix vaccine, which is highly effective in protecting older people against shingles disease.
Can it be rolled out effectively? The Pfizer vaccine, unlike others in late-stage testing, must be kept supercooled, on dry ice around 100 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, from the time it is produced until a few days before it is injected. mRNA quickly self-destructs at higher temperatures. Pfizer has devised an elaborate system to transport the vaccine by truck and specially designed cases to vaccination sites. Public health workers are being trained to handle the vaccine as we speak, but we don’t know for sure how well it will do if containers are left out in the Arizona sun too long. Mishandling the vaccine along the way from factory to patient would render it ineffective, so people who received it could think they were protected when they were not, Dr. Offit said.
Could a premature announcement hurt future vaccines? There’s no way at present to know whether the Pfizer vaccine will be the best over all or for specific age groups. But if the F.D.A. approves it quickly, that could make it harder for manufacturers of other vaccines to carry out their studies. If people are aware that an effective vaccine exists, they may decline to enter clinical trials, partly out of concern they could get a placebo and remain unprotected. Indeed, it may be unethical to use a placebo in such trials. Many vaccines will be needed in order to meet global demand for protection against Covid-19, so it’s crucial to continue additional studies.
Could the Pfizer study expedite future vaccines? Scientists are vitally interested in whether the small number who received the real vaccine but still got sick produced lower levels of antibodies than the vaccinated individuals who remained well. Blood studies of those people would help scientists learn whether there is a “correlate of protection” for Covid-19 — a level of antibodies that can predict whether someone is protected from the disease. If they had that knowledge, public health officials could determine whether other vaccines under production were effective without necessarily having to test them on tens of thousands of people.
But it’s difficult to build such road maps. Scientists have never established correlates of immunity for pertussis, for example, although vaccines have been used against those bacteria for nearly a century.
Still, this is good news, said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a former F.D.A. deputy commissioner. He said: “I hope this makes people realize that we’re not stuck in this situation forever. There’s hope coming, whether it’s this vaccine or another.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/opin ... 778d3e6de3
The Human Brain Looks Suspiciously Like the Universe, Which May Freak You Out
Tim Childers
Popular Mechanics Tue, November 17, 2020
An astrophysicist and neuroscientist teamed up to compare similarities between the universe and networks of neurons in the brain.
Despite the substantial difference in scale, the two complex systems are strikingly alike.
The researchers used a combination of methods from cosmology, neuroscience, and network analysis to quantitatively compare the two.
Describing the human brain as a 3-pound universe may be closer to the truth than we thought. When scientists looked at two of the most complex and fascinating structures known to science—the human network of neurons in your brain and the cosmic web of galaxies—the resemblance seemed uncanny.
And when astrophysicist Franco Vazza and neuroscientist Alberto Feletti crunched the numbers and compared the two structures numerically, the similarities become even more astounding. It might just make you think we're all living in one big simulation after all.
Your brain is made up of a complex network of nearly 100 billion neurons that form 100 trillion neural connections. Neurons are clustered into a hierarchical network of nodes, filaments, and interconnected neural clusters that shape the complex thoughts, feelings, and emotions you experience. But these neurons make up less than 25 percent the mass of your brain, leaving the remaining 75 percent as water.
In a bizarre coincidence, the observable universe also contains an estimated 100 billion galaxies. The teetering balance between the pull of gravity and the accelerated expansion of the universe forms a cosmic web of string-like filaments composed of ordinary and dark matter.
Clusters of galaxies form at the intersections of the filaments, leaving desolate gaps of empty space between them. The resulting image looks strikingly similar to a network of neurons. Strangely, scientists estimate only around 25 percent of the matter in the universe is visible. The remaining 75 percent is dark matter.
“Although the relevant physical interactions in the above two systems are completely different, their observation through microscopic and telescopic techniques have captured a tantalizing similar morphology, to the point that it has often been noted that the cosmic web and the web of neurons look alike,” Vazza and Feletti write in their paper, published in Frontiers in Physics.
Despite these immediate similarities, the scientists wanted to take a more quantitative look at the two systems. So they used a method called power spectrum analysis, a technique often deployed in astrophysics to study the large-scale distribution of galaxies. They measured the strength of tiny fluctuations throughout a range of spatial scales of both a simulation of galaxies and sections of the cerebellum and cerebral cortex of a brain.
"Our analysis showed that the distribution of the fluctuation within the cerebellum neuronal network on a scale from 1 micrometer to 0.1 millimeters follows the same progression of the distribution of matter in the cosmic web but, of course, on a larger scale that goes from 5 million to 500 million light-years," Vazza, from the University of Bologna in Italy, said in a press release.
The researchers also compared the power spectra of other complex systems, including images of tree branches, clouds, and water turbulence, but none came close to matching the neuron and universe duo. However, power spectra don't give any hints into the complexity of systems. To do that, the scientists surveyed the networks of both systems, comparing the average number of connections per node and how these nodes clustered together.
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"Once again, structural parameters have identified unexpected agreement levels. Probably, the connectivity within the two networks evolves following similar physical principles, despite the striking and obvious difference between the physical powers regulating galaxies and neurons," Feletti, from the University of Verona in Italy, said in the press release.
It's rather impressive that the cosmic web of our visible universe may have more in common with the network of neurons in your brain than its individual galaxies and stars—or that the complex network of neurons in your cranium make a better pair with the cosmic web than the individual cells of the brain. However, these similarities only arise when researchers compare a specific scale of each system.
This is particularly important when comparing something infinite like the universe (as far as science can tell), to your very finite brain. Given that everything in our universe is operating off the same rules of physics, it's not hard to imagine similarities will arise if you look hard enough.
Popular Mechanics.
Tim Childers
Popular Mechanics Tue, November 17, 2020
An astrophysicist and neuroscientist teamed up to compare similarities between the universe and networks of neurons in the brain.
Despite the substantial difference in scale, the two complex systems are strikingly alike.
The researchers used a combination of methods from cosmology, neuroscience, and network analysis to quantitatively compare the two.
Describing the human brain as a 3-pound universe may be closer to the truth than we thought. When scientists looked at two of the most complex and fascinating structures known to science—the human network of neurons in your brain and the cosmic web of galaxies—the resemblance seemed uncanny.
And when astrophysicist Franco Vazza and neuroscientist Alberto Feletti crunched the numbers and compared the two structures numerically, the similarities become even more astounding. It might just make you think we're all living in one big simulation after all.
Your brain is made up of a complex network of nearly 100 billion neurons that form 100 trillion neural connections. Neurons are clustered into a hierarchical network of nodes, filaments, and interconnected neural clusters that shape the complex thoughts, feelings, and emotions you experience. But these neurons make up less than 25 percent the mass of your brain, leaving the remaining 75 percent as water.
In a bizarre coincidence, the observable universe also contains an estimated 100 billion galaxies. The teetering balance between the pull of gravity and the accelerated expansion of the universe forms a cosmic web of string-like filaments composed of ordinary and dark matter.
Clusters of galaxies form at the intersections of the filaments, leaving desolate gaps of empty space between them. The resulting image looks strikingly similar to a network of neurons. Strangely, scientists estimate only around 25 percent of the matter in the universe is visible. The remaining 75 percent is dark matter.
“Although the relevant physical interactions in the above two systems are completely different, their observation through microscopic and telescopic techniques have captured a tantalizing similar morphology, to the point that it has often been noted that the cosmic web and the web of neurons look alike,” Vazza and Feletti write in their paper, published in Frontiers in Physics.
Despite these immediate similarities, the scientists wanted to take a more quantitative look at the two systems. So they used a method called power spectrum analysis, a technique often deployed in astrophysics to study the large-scale distribution of galaxies. They measured the strength of tiny fluctuations throughout a range of spatial scales of both a simulation of galaxies and sections of the cerebellum and cerebral cortex of a brain.
"Our analysis showed that the distribution of the fluctuation within the cerebellum neuronal network on a scale from 1 micrometer to 0.1 millimeters follows the same progression of the distribution of matter in the cosmic web but, of course, on a larger scale that goes from 5 million to 500 million light-years," Vazza, from the University of Bologna in Italy, said in a press release.
The researchers also compared the power spectra of other complex systems, including images of tree branches, clouds, and water turbulence, but none came close to matching the neuron and universe duo. However, power spectra don't give any hints into the complexity of systems. To do that, the scientists surveyed the networks of both systems, comparing the average number of connections per node and how these nodes clustered together.
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"Once again, structural parameters have identified unexpected agreement levels. Probably, the connectivity within the two networks evolves following similar physical principles, despite the striking and obvious difference between the physical powers regulating galaxies and neurons," Feletti, from the University of Verona in Italy, said in the press release.
It's rather impressive that the cosmic web of our visible universe may have more in common with the network of neurons in your brain than its individual galaxies and stars—or that the complex network of neurons in your cranium make a better pair with the cosmic web than the individual cells of the brain. However, these similarities only arise when researchers compare a specific scale of each system.
This is particularly important when comparing something infinite like the universe (as far as science can tell), to your very finite brain. Given that everything in our universe is operating off the same rules of physics, it's not hard to imagine similarities will arise if you look hard enough.
Popular Mechanics.
Interesting article! Hence man has biological potential within himself to know and reflect the universe. In the language of the Quran, the elevated soul or Perfect Man is capable of knowing all the names.swamidada wrote:The Human Brain Looks Suspiciously Like the Universe, Which May Freak You Out
Tim Childers
Popular Mechanics Tue, November 17, 2020
The following are some of the profound thoughts that allude to the potential of man to know the universe and become God thus.
People say that human beings are microcosms and this outer universe a macrocosm, but for us the outer is a tiny wholeness and the inner life the vast reality. (Shams Tabriz, "Maqalat")
***
You seek knowledge from books, ridiculous!
You seek pleasure from sweets, ridiculous!
You are the sea of knowledge hidden in a dewdrop;
you are the universe hidden in a body three yards long.
-Rumi, Mathnawi [V, 3578-3579]
From "The Heart of Awareness
***
Shariputra asked: "When a follower attains the great insight of perfect wisdom, does that follower then covet and cultivate omniscience, infinite knowledge?"
The Buddha answered: "Such a follower never covets or cultivates infinite knowledge. That very attitude of not coveting and not cultivating reveals everything to him and he sees all possible structures--from objects of the senses to buddhas--to be transparent in their nature. This radiant transparency is, in fact, simply the total awakeness of a buddha. The now-awakened follower becomes, in this way, immersed in infinite wisdom and blossoms spontaneously as omniscience itself."
-Prajnaparmita
From "Buddha Speaks,"
In the Ginan: Sakhi Mahapad Keri Vaat, peer Sadardeen says:
sakhee arasparas naa kott joyaa neesaree re
evaa sapt dip nav khand ke joyaa parakhee re.....................10
O beloved ones, (In this state), I have observed having gone to that state,
marble forts and palaces. I have also seen and verified for myself,
the seven islands and the nine continents (the entire world) in the experience.
http://ismaili.net/heritage/node/23118