Science News

https://www.universetoday.com/142041/as-expected-the-newly-upgraded-ligo-is-finding-a-black-hole-merger-every-week/#more-142041 As Expected, the Newly Upgraded LIGO is Finding a Black Hole Merger Every Week In February of 2016, scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) announced the first-ever detection of gravitational waves (GWs). Since then, multiple events have been detected, providing insight into a cosmic phenomena that was predicted over a century ago by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. A little over a year ago, LIGO was taken offline so that upgrades could be made to its instruments, which would allow for d…

https://www.quantamagazine.org/scientists-discover-nearly-200000-kinds-of-ocean-viruses-20190425/

https://phys.org/news/2019-04-dark-detector-rarest-event.html Dark matter detector observes rarest event ever recorded by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: How do you observe a process that takes more than one trillion times longer than the age of the universe? The XENON Collaboration research team did it with an instrument built to find the most elusive particle in the universe—dark matter. In a paper to be published tomorrow in the journal Nature, researchers announce that they have observed the radioactive decay of xenon-124, which has a half-life of 1.8 X 1022 years. "We actually saw this decay happen. It's the longest, slowest process that has eve…

Comment not needed... The article is here. Do not forget to follow this link (from the article) for the zoomable version. What are all these ring structures? I thought planetary nebulae do not exist that long, so to see so many seems impossible. But what else are they?

Modeling the 3D Geometry of the Cortical Surface with Genetic Ancestry https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(15)00671-5

https://phys.org/news/2019-04-elusive-molecule-universe-space.html Elusive molecule, first in Universe, detected in space: In the beginning, more than 13 billion years ago, the Universe was an undifferentiated soup of three simple, single-atom elements. Stars would not form for another 100 million years. But within 100,000 years of the Big Bang, the very first molecule emerged, an improbable marriage of helium and hydrogen known as a helium hydride ion, or HeH+. "It was the beginning of chemistry," said David Neufeld, a professor at John Hopkins University and co-author of a study published Wednesday detailing how—after a multi-decade search—scie…

Since beecee has been feting us lately with scientific announcements I thought I would offer the original announcement about the theoretical proposal of black holes. So we can celebrate the latest discoveries nearly 250 years on.

https://phys.org/news/2019-04-tess-earth-sized-planet.html A nearby system hosts the first Earth-sized planet discovered by NASA's Transiting Exoplanets Survey Satellite, as well as a warm sub-Neptune-sized world, according to a new paper from a team of astronomers that includes Carnegie's Johanna Teske, Paul Butler, Steve Shectman, Jeff Crane, and Sharon Wang. Their work is published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "It's so exciting that TESS, which launched just about a year ago, is already a game-changer in the planet-hunting business," said Teske, who is second author on the paper. "The spacecraft surveys the sky and we collaborate with the TESS f…

https://phys.org/news/2019-04-formation-magnetar-billion-years.html Researchers observe formation of a magnetar 6.5 billion light years away: A University of Arkansas researcher is part of a team of astronomers who have identified an outburst of X-ray emission from a galaxy approximately 6.5 billion light years away, which is consistent with the merger of two neutron stars to form a magnetar—a large neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field. Based on this observation, the researchers were able to calculate that mergers like this happen roughly 20 times per year in each region of a billion light years cubed. The research team, which incl…

https://phys.org/news/2019-04-gravitational-expose-black-holes-dark.html Gravitational waves helping to expose black holes, dark matter and theoretical particles: extracts: Some gravitational observations can only be explained either by the presence of dark matter, which we cannot see, or by changing our laws of gravity. Professor Ulrich Sperhake, a theoretical physicist at the University of Cambridge, UK, and lead scientist in the StronGrHEPproject, described gravitational waves as a 'new window onto the universe' that could help us unravel these mysteries An idea Prof. Sperhake is investigating is to extend Einstein's general relativity with a new th…

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-07/black-hole-first-ever-photograph-could-be-unveiled-this-week/10979244 The first-ever photograph of a black hole might be unveiled this week. Here's what it could tell us: Scientists are expected to unveil the first-ever photograph of a black hole this week. If they do, it will mark a major breakthrough in astrophysics and could provide new insight into the giant celestial monsters. Here's what we know about the announcement so far. When will it happen? The US National Science Foundation says it will announce during a press conference "a groundbreaking result" from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) proje…

Organelles — the cell’s workhorses — mingle far more than scientists ever appreciated. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00792-9

https://www.sciencealert.com/we-know-what-dark-matter-isn-t-it-s-not-tiny-black-holes-a-new-test-has-confirmed Astronomers Just Ruled Out Hawking's Theory on The Primordial Nature of Dark Matter MICHELLE STARR 4 APR 2019 We still don't know what dark matter is, but we can strike a line through one option. It is not, as per a theory proposed by the brilliant Stephen Hawking, a bunch of teeny-tiny microscopic black holes. In the most rigorous test of the theory to date, an international team led by researchers from the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Math…

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Building_blocks_of_DNA_and_RNA_could_have_appeared_together_before_life_began_on_Earth_999.html Building blocks of DNA and RNA could have appeared together before life began on Earth by Staff Writers La Jolla CA (SPX) Apr 03, 2019 Scientists for the first time have found strong evidence that RNA and DNA could have arisen from the same set of precursor molecules even before life evolved on Earth about four billion years ago. The discovery, published April 1 in Nature Chemistry, suggests that the first living things on Earth may have used both RNA and DNA, as all cell-based life forms do now. In contrast, the prevaili…

https://phys.org/news/2019-04-dire-future-etched-co2-million.html Dire future etched in the past: CO2 at 3-million year-old levels: Planet-warming carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere—at its highest level in three million years—is poised to lock in dramatic temperature and sea level rises over a timescale of centuries, scientists warned this week. The last time that CO2 hit 400 parts per million (ppm) Greenland was ice free and trees grew at the edge of Antactica. It was long thought that today's greenhouse gas levels were no greater than those 800,000 years ago, during a period of cyclical planetary warming and cooling that would have likely continued…

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have unearthed fossils in a coastal desert of southern Peru of a four-legged whale that thrived both in the sea and on land about 43 million years ago in a discovery that illuminates a pivotal stage in early cetacean evolution. The 13-foot-long (4-meter) mammal, named Peregocetus pacificus, represents a crucial intermediate step before whales became fully adapted to a marine existence, the scientists said on Thursday. Read more: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-science-whale/ancient-four-legged-whale-from-peru-walked-on-land-swam-in-sea-idUKKCN1RG1ZF

"Scientists say they have discovered a "stunning" trove of thousands of fossils on a river bank in China. The fossils are estimated to be about 518 million years old, and are particularly unusual because the soft body tissue of many creatures, including their skin, eyes, and internal organs, have been "exquisitely" well preserved." From this BBC news item. The find is within a lagerstatte, a fine grained sediment in which fine detail, especially of soft tissue, is preserved. (Other famous examples include the Burgess Shale and the Solnhofen limestone.) We can reasonably expect signifcant understanding to emerge from further study of the find, and for more samp…

If the Chicxulub crater is the smoking gun for the impact theory on the KPg extinction event, then these findings from North Dakota by DePalma and his colleagues are one of the ricochets. Here is the abstract - " The most immediate effects of the terminal-Cretaceous Chicxulub impact, essential to understanding the global-scale environmental and biotic collapses that mark the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction, are poorly resolved despite extensive previous work. Here, we help to resolve this by describing a rapidly emplaced, high-energy onshore surge deposit from the terrestrial Hell Creek Formation in Montana. Associated ejecta and a cap of iridium-rich impactite revea…

Hello everyone. I need the methods and materials of determination of trace elements in food products by ICP-OES. if you have any material about this, please inform me. thanks in advance. Best regards, lab analyst if Azerbaijan Food Safety Agency, Rana Mammadli

https://phys.org/news/2019-03-big.html What happened before the Big Bang? March 26, 2019, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: A team of scientists has proposed a powerful new test for inflation, the theory that the universe dramatically expanded in size in a fleeting fraction of a second right after the Big Bang. Their goal is to give insight into a long-standing question: what was the universe like before the Big Bang? Although cosmic inflation is well known for resolving some important mysteries about the structure and evolution of the universe, other very different theories can also explain these mysteries. In some of these theories, the st…

"Lighting bolts sizzle over Johannesburg, South Africa." Thunderstorms can reach voltages ten times greater than those previously recorded, a new measurement suggests. Sunil Gupta at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India, and his colleagues used an instrument called a muon telescope to measure storms’ electric potential — the voltage between the top and bottom of a thundercloud. Muon particles are generated when cosmic rays smash into Earth’s atmosphere. As muons cross a storm’s electric potential, they lose energy, which causes some of the particles to fall below a muon telescope’s detection threshold. A storm with a higher voltage causes each …

An international research team, including a member of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna, investigated the role of "big gods" in the rise of complex large-scale societies. Big gods are defined as moralizing deities who punish ethical transgressions. Contrary to prevailing theories, the team found that beliefs in big gods are a consequence, not a cause, of the evolution of complex societies. The results are published in the current issue of the journal Nature. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-complex-societies-gave-birth-big.html

"The technique could help boys made infertile by cancer treatment to become fathers later in life. " A one-of-a-kind rhesus macaque named Grady is growing up under intense scrutiny at the Oregon National Primate Research Center in Beaverton. That’s because she has an unusual pedigree: researchers created her using sperm from tissue harvested from her father’s testicles when he was young, and then grafted onto his body as an adult. If all goes well with Grady, the technique might one day be used to restore fertility in boys who have received damaging cancer treatments.https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00938-9

https://phys.org/news/2019-01-galaxies-physics-cosmic-expansion.html Active galaxies point to new physics of cosmic expansion: January 29, 2019, European Space Agency: Investigating the history of our cosmos with a large sample of distant 'active' galaxies observed by ESA's XMM-Newton, a team of astronomers found there might be more to the early expansion of the universe than predicted by the standard model of cosmology. According to the leading scenario, our universe contains only a few percent of ordinary matter. One quarter of the cosmos is made of the elusive dark matter, which we can feel gravitationally but not observe, and the rest consists of t…

https://phys.org/news/2019-03-physicists-reveal-dominates-universe.html Physicists reveal why matter dominates universe March 21, 2019, Syracuse University: Physicists in the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University have confirmed that matter and antimatter decay differently for elementary particles containing charmed quarks. Distinguished Professor Sheldon Stone says the findings are a first, although matter-antimatter asymmetry has been observed before in particles with strange quarks or beauty quarks. He and members of the College's High-Energy Physics (HEP) research group have measured, for the first time and with 99.999-percent cer…