Science News

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-01-inexpensive-battery-rapidly-electric-vehicles.html Battery R&D is a huge deal now - and appears to be making significant progress. Of course commercial ie real world success is still to be shown, but - 400km vehicle range in a 10 minute charge, costs not known but claimed to be lower cost than existing Li-Ion - no cobalt or other expensive metals - and expected working life of >3 million km (2 million miles). Supposed to be because the (lithium iron sulphate) battery heats up to best temperature (60 C/140F) for charging and discharging. I have to say I had always thought raised temperatures was a problem for batter…

It has been long assumed that in early hunter/gatherer societies job division was along gender lines. However, recent finding challenge the notion. After finding a skeleton that appeared to be female among a hunter burial site, researchers revisited the other skeletons using a proteomic analysis of enamel and together with osteological measurements they determined that altogether 11 out of 27 of bodies found with big-game hunting tools were actually female. It is an interesting study that challenges a notion that I assume most of us grew up with. Ref: Haas et al. Science Adv. 2020 6:45

https://www.livescience.com/baby-magnetar-pulsar.html

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2021/jan/quantum-tech-help-weigh-universes-most-elusive-particle

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200803-the-solar-canals-revolutionising-indias-renewable-energy Clever solution

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/science/jellyfish-swimming-vortex.html contains cool gif at the top of a jellyfish swimming through laser sheet with tracer particles. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.2494

https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-find-way-to-pull-carbon-out-of-the-air-and-make-it-jet-fuel

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/quantum-teleportation-was-just-achieved-with-90percent-accuracy-over-a-44km-distance/ar-BB1cnZbN?OCID=ansmsnnews11

https://phys.org/news/2020-12-korean-artificial-sun-world-sec-long.html

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)31686-9

A new signal has been detected that passes at least some of the tests for being an ET signal. The "problem" is that the signal is coming from the nearest star Proxima Centauri. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alien-hunters-discover-mysterious-signal-from-proxima-centauri/

Sad news :

Research Article in ASTRONOMY The arches of chaos in the Solar System by Nataša Todorović(1), Di Wu(2) and Aaron J. Rosengren(3) 1Belgrade Astronomical Observatory, Belgrade, Serbia. 2Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA. 3Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA. Abstract Space manifolds act as the boundaries of dynamic…

I don't know what to believe it or not. What the hell is this all about? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/08/robot-wrote-this-article-gpt-3

what is holographic? A holographic storing process save data as a discrete arrangement of snapshots within the thickness of the media. The storage process starts with the splitting of a laser beam into the two signals. Among two of which one beam serves as a reference signal, whereas other beam serve to carry the and therefore, known as data-carrying beam. https://www.infoglint.com/what-is-holographic/

"scientists have discovered something peculiar about the CMB. A new measurement technique has revealed hints of a twist in the light - something that could be a sign of a violation of parity symmetry, hinting at physics outside the Standard Model". https://www.sciencealert.com/a-twist-in-the-background-radiation-of-the-universe-hints-at-new-physics

China has 'successfully' activated its own version of a Tokamak fusion reactor China successfully activates nuclear-powered ‘artificial sun’ (msn.com) China has been collaborating with ITER on such developments. It will be interesting to see if they have implemented any new solutions or technologies to the problem.

The way in which they did this was by placing a Gadolinium atom inside a Buckyball. youtube link deleted

Here's a really interesting video on the MOSAIC expedition, which was the largest expedition to the Arctic of all time. It is an casual interview with the co-coordinator of the expedition, Dr. Matthew Shupe and overall it is really informative and engaging. Just thought I would share the link here in case anyone is interested: Link removed as there was no follow-up discussion.

Scientists from the University of Queensland claim to have found a possible mechanism for time travel. Laypeople-level account: https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2020/09/young-physicist-squares-numbers’-time-travel The paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6382/aba4bc/pdf The abstract: The paper is highly mathematical, and I haven't found the time to take a more detailed look at this topic. I've just learnt about it. It seems that the key idea is to find plausible trajectories in phase-space for particles in the background geometry. That wasn't very informative. Sorry I can't say anything else significant right now. …

You may or may not have heard about the "Wall of Fire" discovered by V2. The basics are, interstellar winds disrupted by the heliosphere form a thick blanket of plasma between us and the Oort cloud. Here's a short summary, with some additional sources listed therein: https://futurism.com/the-byte/solar-system-blanketed-giant-wall-fire/ Here's something to ponder regarding this subject. How is it that comets from the Oort cloud remain frozen after having passed through this barrier and into the heliosphere?

https://phys.org/news/2020-11-greenhouse-gas-emissions-global.html

Interesting noises are coming from the LHCb 'beauty' experiment. Analysis of angular data in decay B+→K*+μ+μ- reveal a 'tension' between the data and predictions of bare Standard Model. It seems that the results appear at the level of corrections via virtual particles. https://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/Welcome.html (My emphasis.)

A team of scientists has a new idea for how to save migrating blue whales from dangerous collisions with ships: shut up and listen. https://www.tectalk.co/scientists-suggest-teaching-ships-to-speak-whale-language/

Here is an extract from an excellent modern data source about symtoms of Covid 19 in the long term that may be of interest. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54296223