Science News

Some potential challenges with regard to immunity. Most patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 showed diminished IgGs (antibodies produced against the virus) after ~2 months of after discharge from the hospital. About 40% became seronegative (no antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 detected). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0965-6 This might put a dent into hopes that infected folks remain immune for an extended amount of time and could make vaccinations more critical. The study was based on 37 symptomatic and 37 asymptomatic patients, so more studies are going to be critical.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/may/31/nasa-spacex-dragon-crew-capsule-docks-international-space-station

This was posted to the [IOP Science](https://iopscience.iop.org/) website today (18th June 2020). https://ioppublishing.org/news/iop-publishing-joins-forces-with-other-publishers-to-make-research-publishing-more-inclusive-and-diverse/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/06/17/is-it-dark-matter-mystery-signal-goes-bump-in-worlds-most-sensitive-detector/ Another article here: https://www.quantamagazine.org/dark-matter-experiment-finds-unexplained-signal-20200617/ And a Twitter thread from one of the physicists involved:

An interesting piece from the Guardian. The Overton window continues to open. "They may not be little green men. They may not arrive in a vast spaceship. But according to new calculations there could be more than 30 intelligent civilisations in our galaxy today capable of communicating with others." “I think it is extremely important and exciting because for the first time we really have an estimate for this number of active intelligent, communicating civilisations that we potentially could contact and find out there is other life in the universe – something that has been a question for thousands of years and is still not answered,” said Christopher Co…

Read more at: https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/ai-learns-from-lung-ct-scans-to-diagnose-covid-19-67625 Although the initial wave of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has abated in many countries, healthcare providers are still looking to identify as many COVID-19 patients as possible and contain the disease. Fast and accurate diagnosis is especially important when unsuspecting patients with a coronavirus infection come to the hospital with health complaints but don’t yet show symptoms of COVID-19. Nasal swab samples analyzed by RT-PCR are currently recommended for the diagnosis of COVID-19, however, supply shortages, a wait time of up to two days for results, a…

https://phys.org/news/2020-06-astrophysicists-cornerstone-einstein-theory-relativity.html

This article is interesting for the very different tactic of protecting mosquitos from malaria in order to protect people.

Detecting Exoplanets and Asteroids: First Citizen Science Successes for Backyard Astronomy Found this on Twitter and sharing here as it may be of interest, https://unistellaroptics.com/detecting-exoplanets-and-asteroids-first-citizen-science-successes-for-backyard-astronomy/ Great the citizen science is making a real contribution. Hope this is interesting Paul

But the best bit is the title: Your Brain Is Not an Onion With a Tiny Reptile Inside https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/TWK8BX6W2M4FFRTYXBZD/full

This is awesome. A picture of the dust cloud around a star 520 light years away. But better than that, there are signs that a planet is forming. Full story here: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2008/ Note that this is a real image, not a simulation or "artists impression"

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200506091537.htm https://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso2007/eso2007a.pdf

This one caught my eye: Hydrocarbon seepage in the deep seabed links subsurface and seafloor biospheres Anirban Chakraborty, S. Emil Ruff, Xiyang Dong, Emily D. Ellefson, Carmen Li, James M. Brooks, Jayme McBee, Bernie B. Bernard, Casey R. J. HubertProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Apr 2020 From the paper: Significance The marine subsurface is one of the largest habitats on Earth composed exclusively of microorganisms and harboring on the order of 1029 microbial cells. It is unclear if deep subsurface life impacts overlying seafloor diversity and biogeochemical cycling in the deep ocean. We analyzed the microbial communities of…

BBC documentary tonight 2100 on BBC2 Friday 24th April

Abstract Complex bound states of magnetic excitations, known as Bethe strings, were predicted almost a century ago to exist in one-dimensional quantum magnets. The dispersions of the string states have so far remained the subject of intense theoretical studies. Here, by performing neutron scattering experiments on the one-dimensional Heisenberg–Ising antiferromagnet SrCo2V2O8 in high longitudinal magnetic fields, we reveal in detail the dispersion relations of the string states over the full Brillouin zone, as well as their magnetic field dependencies. Furthermore, the characteristic energy, the scattering intensity and linewidth of the observed string states exhibit ex…

LIGO and VIRGO have detected gravitational waves from the merger of two black holes of vastly different mass (8 and 30 solar masses). https://www.sciencealert.com/this-black-hole-collision-is-the-first-with-wildly-mismatched-masses They have a nice animation of the merger. This enables some further tests of GR (plot spoiler: results consistent with GR).

Does Transparent aluminum breath new life into the concept of a nuclear light bulb rocket? https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=8095 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_lightbulb

From https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52297058 This seems to be the first evidence for neutrino CP violation. I don't know how significant the results might be. The original paper is free to read in Nature.

Just found an interesting article on the BBC science pages about the CHEOPS Telescope being operational. Looks like there are some really interesting planets out there. Exciting times ahead. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52307087 Great too that CoronaVIrus isn't going to get in the way of science such as this. Paul

A house sized asteroid, which usually spends most of its orbit out past Mars ( in the asteroid belt ), crossed Earth's orbit today, at closer separation than the moon. https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/technology/newfound-house-sized-asteroid-2020-gh2-flies-past-earth-today/ar-BB12Gvdz?ocid=msedgntp And... Bmpbmp1975, DID NOT claim it was the end of the world. ( sorry Bmpbmp1975, I just couldn't resist )

Interesting article on how using "intuitionist" mathematics might explain why time appears to flow and even unite quantum and classical theory: https://www.quantamagazine.org/does-time-really-flow-new-clues-come-from-a-century-old-approach-to-math-20200407/ Some more background here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitionism

'Less than a second after the Big Bang, the universe suddenly blew up from nothing to a hot, dense sea of neutrons and electrons stretching across billions of lightyears. And, 13.8 billion years later, the universe is still expanding, albeit at a much slower rate. The prevailing theory, known as the isotropy hypothesis, argues that the universe is not only expanding but doing so at the same rate in all directions. But a new study suggests that may not be the case after all.' https://www.inverse.com/science/universe-expanding-theory A map showing the rate of the expansion of the Universe in different directions across the sky.K. Migkas et al. 2020, CC BY-SA…

Ancient air pollution, trapped in ice, reveals new details about life and death in 12th Century Britain. In a study, scientists have found traces of lead, transported on the winds from British mines that operated in the late 1100s. Air pollution from lead in this time period was as bad as during the industrial revolution centuries later. The pollution also sheds light on a notorious murder of the medieval era; the killing of Thomas Becket. Becket, though, had other plans. Henry's growing irritation with his Archbishop led the King to reportedly utter the infamous phrase: "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" Unfortunately for Becket,…

Astronomers have observed a distant planet where it probably rains iron. It sounds like a science fiction movie, but this is the nature of some of the extreme worlds we're now discovering. Wasp-76b, as it's known, orbits so close in to its host star, its dayside temperatures exceed 2,400C - hot enough to vaporise metals. The planet's nightside, on the other hand, is 1,000 degrees cooler, allowing those metals to condense and rain out. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51828871

FSU physicists proposed a new particle (yellow) to explain recently reported rare kaon (blue) decays to neutral pions (orange). Credit: Florida State University https://phys.org/news/2020-03-physics-subatomic-particle.html