Science News

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…

https://theconversation.com/new-evidence-for-a-human-magnetic-sense-that-lets-your-brain-detect-the-earths-magnetic-field-113536 A human response to Earth-strength magnetic fields might seem surprising. But given the evidence for magnetic sensation in our animal ancestors, it might be more surprising if humans had completely lost every last piece of the system. Thus far, scientists found evidence that people have working magnetic sensors sending signals to the brain – a previously unknown sensory ability in the subconscious human mind. The full extent of our magnetic inheritance remains to be discovered.

Dear collegues! Does anyone know the scientific and practical conferences on the human sciences indexed in Wos / Scopus? Or any scientific conference index to Scopus or WoS on an ongoing basis? Please, help me find!

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-star-smash-up-billions-of-years-ago-rained-gold-and-platinum-on-the-solar-system Astronomers Just Found The Ancient Cosmic Event That Gave Earth Gold And Platinum MICHELLE STARR 8 MAY 2019 A violent collision between two neutron stars 4.6 billion years ago showered the as-yet-unformed Solar System with heavy elements, new research has found. As much as 0.3 percent of Earth's gold, platinum and uranium (along with other heavy elements) could have been forged in the fire of a merger 1,000 light-years away, when the Solar System was little more than a cloud of gas and dust. "This means that in each of us we would f…

https://phys.org/news/2019-05-filter-dark-universe.html A new filter to better map the dark universe by Glenn Roberts Jr., Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Just as a wine glass distorts an image showing temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background in this photo illustration, large objects like galaxy clusters and galaxies can similarly distort this light to produce lensing effects. Credit: Emmanuel Schaan and Simone Ferraro/Berkeley Lab The earliest known light in our universe, known as the cosmic microwave background, was emitted about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The patterning of this relic light holds man…

LIGO/Virgo have detected 5 new potential gravitational wave events, one might be a merger between a neutronstar and a black hole. See e.g. here.

Article: https://techxplore.com/news/2019-04-dna-lifelike-machines.html Paper: https://robotics.sciencemag.org/content/4/29/eaaw3512 Engineers at Cornell have successfully used DNA to make tiny life imitating machines. That's how I read it. Could this be one step closer to understanding the mechanisms that resulted in life itself?

https://phys.org/news/2019-04-black-hole-light-speed-plasma-clouds.html Astronomers have discovered rapidly swinging jets coming from a black hole almost 8000 light-years from Earth. Published today in the journal Nature, the research shows jets from V404 Cygni's black hole behaving in a way never seen before on such short timescales. The jets appear to be rapidly rotating with high-speed clouds of plasma—potentially just minutes apart—shooting out of the black hole in different directions. more at link............ the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1152-0 A rapidly changing jet orientation in the stellar-mass b…

Article: https://www.apnews.com/fac50d45a19f4239848b1712cfd22c36 Another (better?) article: https://astronomynow.com/2018/07/13/cosmic-mystery-deepens-with-conflicting-measurements-of-hubble-constant/

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…