Science News

A new interpretation of Loop Quantum Gravity would seem to suggest that Black Holes become White Holes in the distant future. https://www.livescience.com/64332-black-holes-white-holes-quantum-gravity.html

Nuru was prepared for the worst when she went to get screened for HIV eight years ago. After caring for her mother in Uganda, who died as a result of the virus, Nuru moved to the United Kingdom to study, and decided to take her health into her own hands. “I was ready to be told I had HIV,” she says. “I felt, ‘That’s okay. I’ve looked up to my mother’.” What she didn’t expect was to be diagnosed with a different viral infection altogether: hepatitis B. “The way the health worker delivered it to me, it was like, ‘It’s worse than HIV’. I was confused, I was suicidal,” says Nuru (who asked that her real name not be used for this article). “I just didn’t understand what i…

Two more universities in Japan have admitted to systematically favouring male applicants to their medical degrees over women. The revelations come four months after reports that Tokyo Medical University had been altering the results of its entrance examination for years to keep the proportion of female entrants below 30% of all students.The news sparked outrage in the country, and prompted a government investigation to examine whether the practice was used at other medical schools. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07769-0

https://phys.org/news/2018-12-luca-universal-common-ancestor.html Looking for LUCA, the last universal common ancestor December 18, 2018 by Keith Cooper, NASA Around 4 billion years ago there lived a microbe called LUCA: the Last Universal Common Ancestor. There is evidence that it could have lived a somewhat 'alien' lifestyle, hidden away deep underground in iron-sulfur rich hydrothermal vents. Anaerobic and autotrophic, it didn't breathe air and made its own food from the dark, metal-rich environment around it. Its metabolism depended upon hydrogen, carbon dioxide and nitrogen, turning them into organic compounds such as ammonia. Most remarkable of all, t…

https://phys.org/news/2018-12-nasa-1st-flight-moon-apollo.html NASA's 1st flight to moon, Apollo 8, marks 50th anniversary: December 18, 2018 by Marcia Dunn This Dec. 24, 1968, file photo made available by NASA shows the Earth behind the surface of the moon during the Apollo 8 mission. (William Anders/NASA via AP, File) Fifty years ago on Christmas Eve, a tumultuous year of assassinations, riots and war drew to a close in heroic and hopeful fashion with the three Apollo 8 astronauts reading from the Book of Genesis on live TV as they orbited the moon. To this day, that 1968 mission is considered to be NASA's boldest and perhaps most dangerous…

Neuroscientists have amassed more evidence for the hypothesis that sticky proteins that are a hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases can be transferred between people under particular conditions — and cause new damage in a recipient’s brain. They stress that their research does not suggest that disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease are contagious, but it does raise concern that certain medical and surgical procedures pose a risk of transmitting such proteins between humans, which might lead to brain disease decades later. “The risk may turn out to be minor — but it needs to be investigated urgently,” says John Collinge, a neurologist at University College London…

https://phys.org/news/2018-12-volume-universe-factor.html Innovation increases observable volume of the universe by a factor of seven December 14, 2018, GEO600 Gravitational Wave Detector: The detection of Einstein's gravitational waves relies on highly precise laser measurements of small length changes. The kilometer-size detectors of the international network (GEO600, LIGO, Virgo) are so sensitive that they are fundamentally limited by tiny quantum mechanical effects. These cause a background noise which overlaps with gravitational-wave signals. This noise is always present and can never be entirely removed. But one can change its properties –…

The following is an article detailing the second man made object to reach Inter stellar space, or that region where the Sun’s flow of material and magnetic field no longer affect its surroundings. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-11/parkes-radio-telescope-tracks-nasa-spacecraft/10605106 NASA confirms Voyager 2's crossing into interstellar space as Parkes tracks its progress ABC Central West By Joanna Woodburn and Kathleen Ferguson Updated yesterday at 4:14pm PHOTO: NASA's Voyager 2 has crossed through the heliosphere into interstellar space. (Supplied: NASA ) NASA has confirmed that Voyager 2 is now in interstellar space, som…

NASA reports hydrated clay like minerals have been detected by the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft on the asteroid Bennu. This could mean the asteroid was once part of a larger object. https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-just-found-signs-of-water-on-an-asteroid

Nice development. Always thought that the constant tapping of rain could be utilised. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/13/rain-or-shine-new-solar-cell-captures-energy-from-raindrops

Tidal and Hydro power are surely an underutilised resource: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/scotland-floating-turbine-tidal-power-record-sr2000-scotrenewables-ofgem-a8503221.html With the reliability of tides, you would presume that more countries would be investing heavily and rapidly in this technology.

Quantum entanglement has been subject to many experiments at subparticle scale. But when it goes to human scale, we are approaching the science fiction realm; the so called teleportation. https://theconversation.com/experiment-shows-einsteins-quantum-spooky-action-approaches-the-human-scale-95372

Baboons are used as pre-clinical models for transplanting pig hearts, but they don’t live long after a transplant. Now, improvements to the process have kept baboons alive for three times as long as before, promising better research in pre-clinical studies of human heart transplants, too. research: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0765-z

Do you see any promising future for these vortex bladeless electricity generators ? Production costs against power generation capability ? How solid technology can this become ? ----> https://vortexbladeless.com/technology-design/ (Please move to 'Engineering' if better deserved)

Pakistan could "run dry" by 2025 as its water shortage is reaching an alarming level. The authorities remain negligent about the crisis that's posing a serious threat to the country's stability, reports Shah Meer Baloch. According to a recent report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Pakistan ranks third in the world among countries facing acute water shortage. https://www.dw.com/en/water-crisis-why-is-pakistan-running-dry/a-44110280

https://phys.org/news/2018-12-greenland-ice-sheet-centuries.html Greenland ice sheet melt 'off the charts' compared with past four centuries December 5, 2018, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Surface melting across Greenland's mile-thick ice sheet began increasing in the mid-19th century and then ramped up dramatically during the 20th and early 21st centuries, showing no signs of abating, according to new research published Dec. 5, 2018, in the journal Nature. The study provides new evidence of the impacts of climate change on Arctic melting and global sea level rise. "Melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet has gone into overdrive. As a result, Gree…

https://phys.org/news/2018-12-mantle-neon-illuminates-earth-formation.html The Earth formed relatively quickly from the cloud of dust and gas around the Sun, trapping water and gases in the planet's mantle, according to research published Dec. 5 in the journal Nature. Apart from settling Earth's origins, the work could help in identifying extrasolar systems that could support habitable planets. Drawing on data from the depths of the Earth to deep space, University of California Davis Professor Sujoy Mukhopadhyay and postdoctoral researcher Curtis Williams used neon isotopes to show how the planet formed. "We're trying to understand where and how the neon in…

https://phys.org/news/2018-12-inosine-potential-route-rna-life.html Inosine could be a potential route to the first RNA and the origin of life on Earth December 3, 2018, Harvard University: Somewhere in the hostile environment of early Earth, life was born. Credit: Harvard University Our prehistoric Earth, bombarded with asteroids and lightening, rife with bubbling geothermal pools, may not seem hospitable today. But somewhere in the chemical chaos of our early planet, life did form. How? For decades, scientists have attempted to create miniature replicas of infant Earth in the lab. There, they hunt for the primordial ingredients that created the …

https://phys.org/news/2018-12-vacuum.html The vacuum fluctuations of light (yellow wave) are amplified in an optical cavity (upper and lower reflecting mirrors). Crystal lattice vibrations (red atoms) at a two-dimensional interface surf this strong light wave. The thus mixed light-vibrational waves couple particularly strongly to electrons in a two-dimensional atomically thin material (green and yellow atoms), changing its properties. Credit: J. M. Harms, MPSD Scientists from the Theory Department of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) in Hamburg, Germany have shown th…

https://phys.org/news/2018-12-saturn-satellites-earth-moon-phoebe.html The water in Saturn's rings and satellites is like that on Earth except for moon Phoebe, which is out of this world December 3, 2018, Planetary Science Institute Above image lower left: Cassini VIMS infrared view of Saturn. Blue is infrared light where water ice reflects relatively brightly. Red is longer wavelength thermal emission showing heat from deep inside the planet. Green is infrared wavelengths where aurora emit light. Above image upper right: Phoebe in visible light. Phoebe is very dark, like charcoal whereas the rings are very bright in visible light like slightly dirty sn…

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-probing-quantum-physics-macroscopic-scale.html Why does quantum mechanics work so well for microscopic objects, yet macroscopic objects are described by classical physics? This question has bothered physicists since the development of quantum theory more than 100 years ago. Researchers at Delft University of Technology and the University of Vienna have now devised a macroscopic system that exhibits entanglement between mechanical phonons and optical photons. They tested the entanglement using a Bell test, one of the most convincing and important tests to show a system behaves non-classically. Ever since its inception more than 100 yea…

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-black-hole-donuts-fountains.html Black hole 'donuts' are actually 'fountains' November 30, 2018, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan Based on computer simulations and new observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), researchers have found that the rings of gas surrounding active supermassive black holes are not simple donut shapes. Instead, gas expelled from the center interacts with infalling gas to create a dynamic circulation pattern, similar to a water fountain in a city park. Most galaxies host a supermassive black hole, millions or billions of times as heavy as the Sun, in their c…

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-mars-oxygen-life.html alty water just below the surface of Mars could hold enough oxygen to support the kind of microbial life that emerged and flourished on Earth billions of years ago, researchers reported Monday. In some locations, the amount of oxygen available could even keep alive a primitive, multicellular animal such as a sponge, they reported in the journal Nature Geosciences. "We discovered that brines"—water with high concentrations of salt—"on Mars can contain enough oxygen for microbes to breathe," said lead author Vlada Stamenkovic, a theoretical physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. "This…

On 26 November, NASA’s InSight mission will attempt to touch down near the Martian equator. If it arrives safely, it will embark on the first mission dedicated to listening for seismic energy rippling through the red planet. Any ‘marsquakes’ it detects could yield clues to the planet’s mysterious interior, including how it is separated into a core, mantle and crust. Whatever scientists learn about Mars’s innards could help illuminate how our own planet evolved billions of years ago. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07482-y

The first spacecraft to collect Martian rocks for eventual return to Earth will explore Jezero crater, NASA announced on 19 November. Jezero is a 45-kilometre-wide crater that was once filled with water, where Martian life could have thrived. “Getting samples from this unique area will revolutionize how we think about Mars and its ability to harbour life,” says Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science, who chose Jezero over three other finalists. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07472-0