Science News

One of the founders of the standard model, one of the greatest particle-physicists of the 60s and 70s, has died. I remember him from a book I read when I still was at school: The scientist, from the Time-Life series. The discovery of the Omega-minus was given as an example of how scientists get to their discoveries. Gell-Mann, together with Yuval Ne'eman, predicted its existence. Gell-Mann gave his theory the name 'eightfold path'. I don't know if quarks were already implicit in his theory, or that he later got the idea that the existence of quarks would explain the symmetries he found.

Inside the ‘secret underground lair’ where scientists are searching the galaxies – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-17/inside-super-kamiokande-360-tour/11209104 My apologies if the above format does not work for some....... Interesting to note that before some needed modification, in 2001, about 6,600 of the photo-multiplier tubes in the Super-Kamiokande detector imploded, due to a type of chain reaction, as the shock wave from the concussion of each imploding tube cracked its neighbours. more info here.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamioka_Observatory#Nobel_prize_2 https://www.nat…

Full summary: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613092/a-quantum-experiment-suggests-theres-no-such-thing-as-objective-reality/ Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05080

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-old-school-climate-denial-day.html Why old-school climate denial has had its day by Michael J. I. Brown, The Conversation New South Wales, which was 100% drought-declared in August 2018, is already suffering climate impacts. Credit: Michael Cleary The Coalition has been re-elected to government, and after six years in office it has not created any effective policies for reducing greenhouse emissions. Does that mean the Australian climate change debate is stuck in 2013? Not exactly. While Australia still lacks effective climate change policies, the debate has definitely shifted. It's particularly noticeable to scientis…

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-06-07/fossil-nuts-from-gondwanan-beech-tree-challenges-plant-evolution/11184956 Fossil nuts from ancient Gondwanan beech tree challenge plant evolution: Nothing could be more different to the dry windy plains of Patagonia than the moist rainforests of the New Guinea highlands. Yet researchers reporting today in the journal Science say fossils of a beech tree found in southern Argentina are from a genus which these days grows in the wet forests of South-East Asia and New Guinea — thousands of kilometres north of freezing Patagonia. Key points: Plant fossils found in Patagonia are from the Castanopsis genus, …

https://www.universetoday.com/142451/dont-worry-about-asteroid-2006qv89-theres-only-a-1-in-7000-chance-itll-hit-the-earth-in-september/#more-142451 Don’t Worry About Asteroid 2006QV89. There’s Only a 1 in 7000 Chance It’ll Hit the Earth in September Whenever scientists announce an upcoming close encounter with an asteroid, certain corners of the internet light up like the synaptic rush that accompanies a meth binge, with panicky headlines shouted straight from the brain stem. But never mind that. We’re not that corner of the internet. We’re sober, yo! The fact of the matter is, there aren’t any more near-Earth asteroids than there used to be. We’re just get…

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-table-salt-compound-europa.html A familiar ingredient has been hiding in plain sight on the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. Using a visible light spectral analysis, planetary scientists at Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech manages for NASA, have discovered that the yellow color visible on portions of the surface of Europa is actually sodium chloride, a compound known on Earth as table salt, which is also the principal component of sea salt. The discovery suggests that the salty subsurface ocean of Europa may chemically resemble Earth's oceans more than previously thought, challenging decades of supposition a…

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-astronomers-mass-small-black-hole.html If astronomers want to learn about how supermassive black holes form, they have to start small—really small, astronomically speaking. In fact, a team including University of Michigan astronomer Elena Gallo has discovered that a black hole at the center of a nearby dwarf galaxy, called NGC 4395, is about 40 times smaller than previously thought. Their findings are published in the journal Nature Astronomy. Currently, astronomers believe that supermassive black holes sit at the center of every galaxy as massive as or larger than the Milky Way. But they're curious about black holes in smaller…

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-most-detailed-ever-simulations-black-hole-longstanding.html An international team has constructed the most detailed, highest resolution simulation of a black hole to date. The simulation proves theoretical predictions about the nature of accretion disks—the matter that orbits and eventually falls into a black hole—that have never before been seen. The research will publish on June 5 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Among the findings, the team of computational astrophysicists from Northwestern University, the University of Amsterdam and the University of Oxford found that the inner-most region of an acc…

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-heart-lonesome-galaxy-brimming-dark.html Heart of lonesome galaxy is brimming with dark matter: Isolated for billions of years, a galaxy with more dark matter packed into its core than expected has been identified by astronomers using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The galaxy, known as Markarian 1216 (abbreviated as Mrk 1216), contains stars that are within 10% the age of the universe—that is, almost as old as the universe itself. Scientists have found that it has gone through a different evolution than typical galaxies, both in terms of its stars and the invisible dark matter that, through gravity, holds the galax…

Dark matter is a mysterious, invisible substance that typically dominates the makeup of galaxies; finding an object that's missing dark matter is unprecedented, and came as a complete surprise. "If there's one object, you always have a little voice in the back of your mind saying, 'but what if you're wrong?' Even though we did all the checks we could think of, we were worried that nature had thrown us for a loop and had conspired to make something look really special whereas it was really something more mundane," said team leader Pieter van Dokkum, Sol Goldman Family Professor of Astronomy at Yale University. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-03-unusu…

The Navy says they want to educate pilots as to what UFOs are so that hostile aircraft or atmospheric anomalies will not be mistaken for hostile aircraft or non hostile aircraft. Yet this report was documented. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings-navy-pilots.html And this one: Interestingly the article also said the incidents were fewer away from the US.

Full Text: https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2727726/measles-mumps-rubella-vaccination-autism-nationwide-cohort-study

https://phys.org/news/2019-05-stabilizing-no-boundary-universe-quantum.html Stabilizing the no-boundary proposal sheds light on the universe's quantum origins: One idea for how the universe began is that the universe may have appeared out of nothing due to some quantum effect, such as quantum tunneling. In the 1980s, Stephen Hawking and James Hartle further elaborated on this idea by suggesting that time did not exist before the beginning of the universe, leading them to conclude that the universe has no initial boundary conditions on either time or space. The idea is called the "no-boundary proposal" or the "Hawking-Hartle state." However, precisely descr…

Sydney on Tuesday announced its first major water restrictions in a decade, putting limits on homes and businesses amid a record-breaking drought. The New South Wales government said the greater Sydney region water catchments were experiencing some of the lowest flows since the 1940s, and that the restrictions would be enforced from next week. "Regional NSW has been experiencing a record drought," the southeastern state's minister for water Melinda Pavey said in a statement. more at link....

https://phys.org/news/2019-05-compound-antibiotic-resistant-superbugs.html A new compound which visualises and kills antibiotic resistant superbugs has been discovered by scientists at the University of Sheffield and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL). The team, led by Professor Jim Thomas, from the University of Sheffield's Department of Chemistry, is testing new compounds developed by his Ph.D. student Kirsty Smitten on antibiotic resistant gram-negative bacteria, including pathogenic E. coli. more at link....... <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>&…

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-exploration-nasa/nasa-executive-quits-weeks-after-appointment-to-lead-2024-moon-landing-plan-idUSKCN1SU0A5 - excerpts : " NASA executive quits weeks after appointment to lead 2024 moon landing plan CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A top NASA executive hired in April to guide strategy for returning astronauts to the moon by 2024 has resigned, the space agency said on Thursday, the culmination of internal strife and dwindling congressional support for the lunar initiative. Mark Sirangelo, named six weeks ago as special assistant to NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, left the agency as NASA aban…

https://www.bangor.ac.uk/news/latest/new-research-at-bangor-university-helps-shed-light-on-the-possibility-of-past-life-on-venus-40747 New research at Bangor University helps shed light on the possibility of past life on Venus: Whilst today Venus is a very inhospitable place, with surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead, geological evidence, supported by computer model simulations, indicate it may have been much cooler billions of years ago and had an ocean, and so have been very similar to Earth. more at link......... <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<&l…

This result is just staggering and (to me) completely incomprehensible. And potentially really dangerous. Almost 50% of people think it is wrong to run an "A/B test" (eg. a randomised controlled trial of two medical treatments) but few people think it is inappropriate to just impose either A or B, without knowing which is best. I just cannot understand the psychology behind this. https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/05/08/1820701116 I just hope it is the other (sane) 50% who get to make the decisions!

https://phys.org/news/2019-05-video-years-gravity.html One hundred years ago this month, observations performed during a total solar eclipse proved for the first time the gravitational bending of light predicted by Albert Einstein's new theory of gravity, general relativity. In this video, Günther Hasinger, ESA Director of Science, reflects on this historic measurement that inaugurated a century of exciting experiments, investigating gravity on Earth and in space and proving general relativity in ever greater detail. more at link.....

https://phys.org/news/2019-05-massive-martian-ice-discovery-window.html Massive Martian ice discovery opens a window into red planet's history: Newly discovered layers of ice buried a mile beneath Mars' north pole are the remnants of ancient polar ice sheets and could be one of the largest water reservoirs on the planet, according to scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Arizona. The team made the discovery using measurements gathered by the Shallow Radar (SHARAD) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). SHARAD emits radar waves that can penetrate up to a mile and a half beneath the surface of Mars. The findings, pub…

https://phys.org/news/2019-05-scientists-mechanisms-formation-moon.html Scientists discover one of the mechanisms of water formation on the moon: The results of a recent study conducted by the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the agency's automatic interplanetary station, show the existence of 'permafrost' near the poles of the moon with a relatively high content of water ice (up to 5% by weight). It is believed that water ice could supply a life support system for the future Russian Lunar Station, and that it could also produce hydrogen-oxygen fuel for flights into deep space. Researchers from the Higher School of Economics and the Space Research Institu…

Just came across this while catching up with various blogs: http://ottawacitizen.com/storyline/worlds-main-list-of-science-predators-vanishes-with-no-warning Beall's list of predatory publishers has been taken off-line.

https://phys.org/news/2019-05-gravitational-physicists.html Gravitational waves leave a detectable mark, physicists say: extract: Physicists have long known that gravitational waves leave a memory on the particles along their path, and have identified five such memories. Researchers have now found three more aftereffects of the passing of a gravitational wave, "persistent gravitational wave observables" that could someday help identify waves passing through the universe. Each new observable, Grant said, provides different ways of confirming the theory of general relativity and offers insight into the intrinsic properties of gravitational waves. &…

I used to think (because we were told this in school) that the standard definition of a kilogram was the mass of 1 litre of water at stp. I guess this definition could be ambiguous anyway what with isotopes in the water and the accuracy of measuring the litre exactly. They have apparently got a way to calculate 1 kilogram and to define it with that calculation from Plank's constant. I did not see the derivation in this New Scientist article. I'll try to look it up sometime unless anyone knows what the relationship is between Plank and the kilo and can post it? Here is their headline anyway: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2203686-the-kilogram-has-been…