Science News

https://phys.org/news/2019-02-nasa-life-ocean-floor.html NASA study reproduces origins of life on ocean floor February 26, 2019, NASA: Scientists have reproduced in the lab how the ingredients for life could have formed deep in the ocean 4 billion years ago. The results of the new study offer clues to how life started on Earth and where else in the cosmos we might find it. Astrobiologist Laurie Barge and her team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are working to recognize life on other planets by studying the origins of life here on Earth. Their research focuses on how the building blocks of life form in hydrothermal vents on …

Hundreds of thousands of native fish in Australia’s Darling River have died following a major outbreak of blue–green algae and some severe weather. Two mass die-offs have been reported near Menindee in western New South Wales — the first was late last year, and the second last week. Outbreaks of blue–green algae (cyanobacteria), which thrive in warm water, are not uncommon during droughts. The algae did not directly cause the mass die-off; rapid cooling and intense rainfall might have disrupted the bloom and depleted the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water, killing the fish, said Anthony Townsend, a senior fisheries manager at the New South Wales Department of Pr…

Scientists in Japan now have permission to inject 'reprogrammed' stem cells into people with spinal-cord injuries. An upcoming trial will mark the first time that induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells have been used to treat spinal-cord injuries, after a committee at Japan’s health ministry approved the study on 18 February. IPS cells are created by inducing cells from body tissue to revert to an embryonic-like state, from which they can develop into other cell types. Hideyuki Okano, a stem-cell scientist at Keio University in Tokyo, will coax donor iPS cells into becoming neural precursor cells, which can develop into neurons and glial cells. His team will then injec…

The DNA of life on Earth naturally stores its information in just four key chemicals — guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine, commonly referred to as G, C, A and T, respectively. Now scientists have doubled this number of life’s building blocks, creating for the first time a synthetic, eight-letter genetic language that seems to store and transcribe information just like natural DNA. "Synthetic DNA seems to behave like the natural variety, suggesting that chemicals beyond nature’s four familiar bases could support life on Earth" https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00650-8

If all goes well, an Israeli lander scheduled to launch tomorrow will become the first privately funded craft to land on the Moon. The trip will be short and sweet — a two-day study of magnetism in rocks. But it will pioneer the type of public-private partnership that seems set to kick off a new era of lunar exploration. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00652-6

Good summary of the observations at the time (gravitational waves and all electromagnetic spectrum) and what has been observed since then, including a relativistic jet (confirming the creation of a black hole). Or about twice the mass of all the world's oceans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/02/21/merging-neutron-stars-made-an-unstoppable-jet-and-it-moves-at-nearly-the-speed-of-light/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-018-0573-2 Published: 24 September 2018 No evidence for modifications of gravity from galaxy motions on cosmological scales: Abstract: Current tests of general relativity (GR) remain confined to the scale of stellar systems or the strong gravity regime. A departure from GR on cosmological scales has been advocated1 as an alternative to the cosmological constant Λ (ref. 2) to account for the observed cosmic expansion history3,4. However, such models yield distinct values for the linear growth rate of density perturbations and consequently for the associated galaxy peculiar velocity field. Measurements of the resul…

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46856779 Bizarrely: So he repeatedly makes bigoted and discriminatory statements but ... what? He doesn't mean them? Just goes to show, even Nobel Prize winners can be idiots.

https://www.space.com/mars-rover-opportunity-declared-dead.html One of the great exploration stories of our time is officially over. NASA declared its Opportunity Mars rover dead today (Feb. 13), more than eight months after the solar-powered robot went silent during a raging dust storm on the Red Planet — and a day after the final calls to wake Oppy up went unanswered. "I declare the Opportunity mission as complete, and with it the Mars Exploration Rover mission complete," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said today during an event at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. [Mars…

https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20190214 LIGO Receives New Funding to Search for More Extreme Cosmic Events News Release • February 14, 2019 Grants from the U.S., United Kingdom, and Australia will fund next-generation improvements to LIGO The National Science Foundation (NSF) is awarding Caltech and MIT $20.4 million to upgrade the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), an NSF-funded project that made history in 2015 after making the first direct detection of ripples in space and time, called gravitational waves. The investment is part of a joint international effort in collaboration with UK Research and Innovation and the A…

After exploring for 15 years across 45 kilometres of the Meridiani Planum region of Mars, NASA’s Opportunity rover is officially dead.https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00575-2 R.I.P.

https://newatlas.com/earliest-evidence-life-mobility/58435/ Two billion-year old fossils reveal earliest evidence of living locomotion: For most of the time Earth has been inhabited, life took the form of single-celled organisms that just sat there in lumps, or floated around on water currents. But now fossils found in the African country of Gabon have turned up the earliest evidence of life showing some initiative and moving around of its own accord. It now seems that life was mobile some 1.5 billion years earlier than previously thought. more at link...........

I came across a couple of articles that, for different reasons, argue that string theory cannot be correct. The first, from the failure to find evidence for supersymmetry: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/02/12/why-supersymmetry-may-be-the-greatest-failed-prediction-in-particle-physics-history/ The second looks at the types of universes that are possiblest in string theory: https://www.quantamagazine.org/dark-energy-may-be-incompatible-with-string-theory-20180809/

https://phys.org/news/2019-02-possibility-underground-volcanism-mars.html New study suggests possibility of recent underground volcanism on Mars February 12, 2019, American Geophysical Union A study published last year in the journal Science suggested liquid water is present beneath the south polar ice cap of Mars. Now, a new study in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters argues there needs to be an underground source of heat for liquid water to exist underneath the polar ice cap. The new research does not take sides as to whether the liquid water exists. Instead, the authors suggest recent magmatic activity—the formation of a magma chamber within…

https://phys.org/news/2019-02-james-clerk-maxwell-telescope-flare.html The Hawaii-based James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) has discovered a stellar flare 10 billion times more powerful than the Sun's solar flares, a history-making discovery that could unlock decades-old questions about the origin of our own Sun and planets, giving insight into how these celestial bodies were born. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-02-james-clerk-maxwell-telescope-flare.html#jCp the paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aaf3b1/meta The JCMT Transient Survey: An Extraordinary Submillimeter Flare in the T Tauri Binary System JW 566…

https://phys.org/news/2019-02-nasa-impact-crater-greenland-ice.html NASA finds possible second impact crater under Greenland ice February 11, 2019 by Maria-José Viñas, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center A NASA glaciologist has discovered a possible second impact crater buried under more than a mile of ice in northwest Greenland. Credit: NASA Goddard A NASA glaciologist has discovered a possible second impact crater buried under more than a mile of ice in northwest Greenland. his follows the finding, announced in November 2018, of a 19-mile-wide crater beneath Hiawatha Glacier—the first meteorite impact crater ever discovered under Earth's ice shee…

A hungry mosquito is at best a nuisance; at worst, it is a transmitter of deadly diseases. Now, researchers have discovered a way to stop mosquitoes biting — by using human ‘diet’ drugs to trick them into feeling full. The scientists suggest that the drugs could one day be used to control the spread of diseases. Their results are reported in Cell on 7 February.https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00511-4

Exploring applications for tires and more; electric vehicle magnets research motor... Perhaps you are lucky catching the next broadcast : ----> https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/scienceview/20190206/2015208/

SPAM LINK DELETED I can't understand it clear...

When Europeans arrived in the Americas, they caused so much death and disease that it changed the global climate, a new study finds. European settlers killed 56 million indigenous people over about 100 years in South, Central and North America, causing large swaths of farmland to be abandoned and reforested, researchers at University College London, or UCL, estimate. The increase in trees and vegetation across an area the size of France resulted in a massive decrease in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, according to the study. Carbon levels changed enough to cool the Earth by 1610, researchers found. Columbus arrived in 1492, "CO2 and climate had been…

Neanderthals and Denisovans might have lived side by side for tens of thousands of years, scientists report in two papers in Nature. The long-awaited studies are based on the analysis of bones, artefacts and sediments from Denisova Cave in southern Siberia, which is dotted with ancient-human remains. They provide the first detailed history of the site’s 300,000-year occupation by different groups of ancient humans.https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00353-0

https://www.yahoo.com/news/earths-oldest-known-rock-found-211500968.html

(Not really science news, but this is probably the most appropriate forum.) There is an episode of the series In Our Time about the life and work of Emmy Noether: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00025bw

Something strange is going on at the top of the world. Earth’s north magnetic pole has been skittering away from Canada and towards Siberia, driven by liquid iron sloshing within the planet’s core. The magnetic pole is moving so quickly that it has forced the world’s geomagnetism experts into a rare move. On 15 January, they are set to update the World Magnetic Model, which describes the planet’s magnetic field and underlies all modern navigation, from the systems that steer ships at sea to Google Maps on smartphones.https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00007-1

Hey everyone im new to these forms and wanted to use this as a platform to incite thoughtful discussion relating to the scientific world (I guess thats fairly obvious since im posting this haha) but I wanted to speak about something I came across recently. Recently a report was issued from Nature regarding the political environment of Nicaragua and its effects on the scientific/academic communities residing there and in the U.S. I was wondering why the importance of academia is suddenly thrown out the window when an individuals loyalty to their government comes into question. As a result of the political uprisings in Nicaragua, environmental protections such as the f…