Science News

Researchers from MIT have flown a plane powered by an ‘ion drive’ for the first time. The drive uses high powered electrodes to ionise and accelerate air particles, creating an ‘ionic wind’. This wind drove a 5m wide craft across a sports hall. Unlike the ion drives which have powered space craft for decades, this new drive uses air as its accelerant. The researchers say it could power silent drones.

The food system is a major driver of climate change, changes in land use, depletion of freshwater resources, and pollution of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems through excessive nitrogen and phosphorus inputs. Here we show that between 2010 and 2050, as a result of expected changes in population and income levels, the environmental effects of the food system could increase by 50-90% in the absence of technological changes and dedicated mitigation measures, reaching levels that are beyond the planetary boundaries that define a safe operating space for humanity. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30305731

Saw a report in television that japanese are measuring structural level irregularities in aging bridges with resolution of one milimetre from a satellite using its synthetic aperture radar. Wondering if I was half asleep during the report; I had to see it again. I was not asleep. That is their spectacular unbelievable claim. The program should be available as video-on-demand soon. ----> https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/scienceview/20181121/2015204/

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-evolution-south-africa-hominin-fair-weather.html Evolution: South Africa's hominin record is a fair-weather friend November 21, 2018, University of Cape Town New research from an international team of scientists led by University of Cape Town isotope geochemist Dr. Robyn Pickering is the first to provide a timeline for fossils from the caves within the Cradle of Humankind. It also sheds light on the climate conditions of our earliest ancestors in the area. Published online in the journal Nature on 21 November 2018, the work corrects assumptions that the region's fossil-rich caves could never be related to each other. In fa…

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-reveals-universe-secret-ingredients-life.html Study reveals one of universe's secret ingredients for life: November 21, 2018 by Will Wright, Australian National University: A new study led by ANU has investigated the nature of a cosmic phenomenon that slows down star formation, which helps to ensure the universe is a place where life can emerge. Lead researcher Dr. Roland Crocker from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics said the research team studied a particular way stars provide a counter-pressure to gravity that slows down the star-formation process. "If star formation happened rapidly, all stars…

This is huge! This changes everything! Wombat poop: Scientists reveal mystery behind cube-shaped droppings https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-46258616

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-mars-visitor-years-legged-geologist.html Mars is about to get its first U.S. visitor in years: a three-legged, one-armed geologist to dig deep and listen for quakes. NASA's InSight makes its grand entrance through the rose-tinted Martian skies on Monday, after a six-month, 300 million-mile (480 million-kilometer) journey. It will be the first American spacecraft to land since the Curiosity rover in 2012 and the first dedicated to exploring underground. NASA is going with a tried-and-true method to get this mechanical miner to the surface of the red planet. Engine firings will slow its final descent and the spacecraft will plop …

So many people use herbs to complete their treatment ; they unfortunately ignore the fact that concurrent use of herbs may mimic, magnify, or oppose the effect of drugs; here is an amaizing article explaining these interactions and their results link removed

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-world-fastest-camera-trillion.html What happens when a new technology is so precise that it operates on a scale beyond our characterization capabilities? For example, the lasers used at INRS produce ultrashort pulses in the femtosecond range (10-15 s), which is far too short to visualize. Although some measurements are possible, nothing beats a clear image, says INRS professor and ultrafast imaging specialist Jinyang Liang. He and his colleagues, led by Caltech's Lihong Wang, have developed what they call T-CUP: the world's fastest camera, capable of capturing 10 trillion (1013) frames per second (Fig. 1). This new camera literally makes…

Asteroid Bennu for example .. if it has ice, will it have ice worms. Japanese experiments show UV light causing ice to act as a liquid. "researchers say that these same reactions could also be responsible for creating just the right environment for organic molecules to form, the very first building blocks needed for life to start." https://www.google.ca/search?q=uv+causing+ice+to+act+as+liquid&rlz=1C1GGRV_enCA803CA812&oq=uv+causing+ice+to+act+as+liquid&aqs=chrome..69i57.11605j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

This sounds very dodgy to me, despite it came from BBC Science News 2018-11-16:- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46143399 The Kibble Balance measures weight in order to deduce the mass of the reference standard weight. Hmmmmm

https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20180910 Jocelyn Bell Burnell Receives Breakthrough Prize News Release • September 10, 2018 The LIGO Lab and LIGO Scientific Collaboration are heartily congratulating Jocelyn Bell Burnell for becoming just the fourth recipient of the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, a $3 million dollar prize bestowed to a scientist or group of scientists deemed to have made significant discoveries in or contributions to science. Burnell is being recognized for her astute observation of odd repeating ‘blips’ in radio telescope data gathered while she was a graduate student at Cambridge University in 1967. Initially…

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-insight-deep-time-evolution-animal-life.html New research offers detail and insight into deep-time evolution of animal life on islands November 14, 2018, University of Kansas Islands have been vital laboratories for advancing evolutionary theory since the pioneering work of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in the 19th century. Now, a new paper appearing in PLOS ONE from an international team of investigators describes two new fossil relatives of marsupials that shed light on how a unique island ecosystem evolved some 43 million years ago during the Eocene. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-11-insight-deep…

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-gravitational-merged-hyper-massive-neutron-star.html For the first time astronomers have detected gravitational waves from a merged, hyper-massive neutron star. The scientists, Maurice van Putten of Sejong University in South Korea, and Massimo della Valle of the Osservatorio Astronomico de Capodimonte in Italy, publish their results in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-11-gravitational-merged-hyper-massive-neutron-star.html#jCp the paper: https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/article/482/1/L46/5090425 Observational evidence for extended emission to GW170817 …

The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) in Hawaii has discovered a visitor from afar. Pan-STARRS primary mission is to detect near earth objects that pose an impact threat but sometimes they get to do fun science like this. The asteroid seems to come from the constellation Lyra, but the exact origin is still unknown. It has been named Oumuamua, Hawaiian for “a messenger from afar arriving first” and they think it has traveled millions of years to visit us. https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/20/16679890/interstellar-asteroid-oumuamua-pan-starrs-solar-system http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1737/ From the second link:

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-dark-hurricane-chance-axions.html A team of researchers from Universidad de Zaragoza, King's College London and the Institute of Astronomy in the U.K. has found that a "dark matter hurricane" passing through our solar system offers a better than usual chance of detecting axions. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review D, the group describes their findings and why they believe their observations could offer help in understanding dark matter. The evidence for the existence of dark matter is very strong, yet scientists are still unable to find a way to actually "see" it. Because of that, they keep trying to find new way…

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-physicists-fractal-electrons.html Physicists build fractal shape out of electrons November 12, 2018 by Utrecht University, Utrecht University Faculty of Science Electrons in bonding (left) and non-bonding (right) Sierpiński triangles; scale bar 2nm. Credit: Kempkes et al., Nature Physics, 2018 In physics, it is well-known that electrons behave very differently in three dimensions, two dimensions or one dimension. These behaviours give rise to different possibilities for technological applications and electronic systems. But what happens if electrons live in 1.58 dimensions – and what does it actually mean? Theoretic…

Interesting article I came across, and which I find appropriate particularly with the undeserved and mostly invalidated criticism leveled at science, by many "would be's if they could be's" out there....My question is highlighted at the end of the two articles........ In Praise of Scientific Theory Just a hunch? Hardly. Think germ theory, atomic theory and the theory of evolution. Science can make life difficult for manipulators and demagogues. Without science, it would be much easier to convince the public that an intelligent designer created the world, or that greenhouse gas warming and lead contamination are just the fantasies of “alarmists.” To physicis…

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-spacetimea-creation-well-known-actors.html Spacetime—a creation of well-known actors? November 9, 2018, The Henryk Niewodniczanski Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences: Most physicists believe that the structure of spacetime is formed in an unknown way at the Planck scale, i.e., at a scale close to one trillionth of a trillionth of a metre. However, careful considerations undermine this prediction. There are quite a few arguments in favour of the emergence of spacetime as a result of processes taking place at the level of quarks and their conglomerates.What is spacetime? The absolute, unchanging arena of even…

More organisms living deep in the earth by metabolizing hydrogen. Cyanobacteria show up in yet another odd place! Just ad them and stir to create an earth like environment! https://www.space.com/42001-weird-underground-microbes-aid-mars-life-search.html

http://www.pnas.org/content/104/suppl_1/8567 Darwin's greatest discovery: Design without designer: Abstract: Darwin's greatest contribution to science is that he completed the Copernican Revolution by drawing out for biology the notion of nature as a system of matter in motion governed by natural laws. With Darwin's discovery of natural selection, the origin and adaptations of organisms were brought into the realm of science. The adaptive features of organisms could now be explained, like the phenomena of the inanimate world, as the result of natural processes, without recourse to an Intelligent Designer. The Copernican and the Darwinian Revolutions …

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8126390/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl "The Most Unknown is an epic documentary film that sends nine scientists to extraordinary parts of the world to uncover unexpected answers to some of humanity's biggest questions. How did life begin? What is time? What is consciousness? How much do we really know? By introducing researchers from diverse backgrounds for the first time, then dropping them into new, immersive field work they previously hadn't tackled, the film reveals the true potential of interdisciplinary collaboration, pushing the boundaries of how science storytelling is approached. What emerges is a deeply human trip to the foundations …

The disputed article......https://phys.org/news/2016-09-oldest-fossils-life-young-earth.html Oldest fossils point to thriving life on young Earth September 1, 2016 Australian researchers have found the world's oldest fossils, revealing that diverse life forms thrived on Earth 3.7 billion years ago. Co-lead investigator Associate Professor Vickie Bennett from The Australian National University (ANU) said the research on stromatolite fossils found in Greenland provided a greater understanding of early habitats of life on Earth and could have implications for searching for life on Mars. "This discovery turns the study of planetary habitability on it…

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-milky-life-star.html For almost two centuries, scientists have theorized that life may be distributed throughout the universe by meteoroids, asteroids, planetoids, and other astronomical objects. This theory, known as Panspermia, is based on the idea that microorganisms and the chemical precursors of life are able to survive being transported from one star system to the next. Expanding on this theory, a team of researchers from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) conducted a study that considered whether panspermia could be possible on a galactic scale. According to the model they created, they determined that the …

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181014142709.htm extract: Physicists send a beam of either electrons, protons, or a laser through a plasma. Free electrons in the plasma move toward the beam, but overshoot it, then come crashing back, creating a bubble structure behind the beam and intense electric fields. If you inject particles, like more electrons, into the wake, it can accelerate the injected particles in a shorter amount of time with an electric field 10 or more times stronger. In the study, proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration has been demonstrated for the first time. The strong electric fields, generated by a series of prot…