Science News

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…

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-rowthe-planets-align-night-sky.html Five in a row—the planets align in the night sky October 12, 2018 by Tanya Hill, The Conversation For the second time this year, the five brightest planets can be seen at the same time. You can catch them by looking towards the western sky after sunset. The planets will form a line rising up from the horizon. Mercury and Venus are low to the west, with bright Jupiter shining just above. Higher up in the northwestern sky is Saturn, and completing the set of five is the red planet Mars, high overhead. On Friday October 12 a beautiful crescent Moon sits just to the right of Jupiter…

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-russia-astronauts-emergency.html US, Russian astronauts land safely after rocket failure October 11, 2018 by Dmitry Lovetsky And Vladimir Isachenkov The Soyuz-FG rocket booster with Soyuz MS-10 space ship carrying a new crew to the International Space Station, ISS, flies in the sky at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018. The Russian rocket carries U.S. astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin. The two astronauts are making an emergency landing after a Russian booster rocket carrying them into orbit to the International Space Station has failed after launch. (AP Phot…

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-massive-star-unusual-death-heralds.html Massive star's unusual death heralds the birth of compact neutron star binary October 11, 2018, Carnegie Institution for Science The three panels represent moments before, when and after the faint supernova iPTF14gqr, visible in the middle panel, appeared in the outskirts of a spiral galaxy located 920 million light years away from us. The massive star that died in the supernova left behind a neutron star in a very tight binary system. These dense stellar remnants will ultimately spiral into each other and merge in a spectacular explosion, giving off gravitational and electrom…

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-era-quest-dark.html Since the 1970s, astronomers and physicists have been gathering evidence for the presence in the universe of dark matter: a mysterious substance that manifests itself through its gravitational pull. However, despite much effort, none of the new particles proposed to explain dark matter have been discovered. In a review that was published in Nature this week, physicists Gianfranco Bertone (UvA) and Tim Tait (UvA and UC Irvine) argue that the time has come to broaden and diversify the experimental effort, and to incorporate astronomical surveys and gravitational wave observations in the quest for the nature of dark matt…

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-high-scandium-galaxy-giant-black.html High levels of scandium near the galaxy's giant black hole were illusory, astronomers find October 10, 2018, Lund University Astronomers from Lund University in Sweden have now found the explanation to a recent mystery at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy: the high levels of scandium discovered last spring near the galaxy's giant black hole were in fact an optical illusion. Last spring, researchers published a study about the apparent presence of astonishing and dramatically high levels of three different elements in red giant stars, located less than three light years away …

https://www.technology.org/2018/10/06/parker-solar-probe-changed-the-game-before-it-even-launched/ On Oct. 3, 2018, Parker Solar Probe performed the first significant celestial maneuver of its seven-year mission. As the orbits of the spacecraft and Venus converged toward the same point, Parker Solar Probe slipped in front of the planet, allowing Venus’ gravity — relatively small by celestial standards — to twist its path and change its speed. This maneuver, called a gravity assist, reduced Parker’s speed relative to the Sun by 10 percent — amounting to 7,000 miles per hour — drawing the closest point of its orbit, called perihelion, nearer to the star by 4 million mi…

No, not really........https://www.technology.org/2018/10/08/new-image-shows-the-rugged-landscape-of-comet-67p/ Comet 67P Rugged Landscape Shown on a New Image Posted Yesterday In March of 2004, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft blasted off from French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5 rocket. After ten years, by November of 2014, the spacecraft rendezvoused with its target – Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P/C-G). Over the more than two years that followed, the spacecraft remained in orbit of this comet, gathering information on its surface, interior, and gas and dust environment. And on September 30th, 2016, Rosetta came closer than ever t…

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…

Limiting global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels would be a herculean task, involving rapid, dramatic changes in the way that governments, industries and societies function, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06876-2

https://phys.org/news/2018-09-astronomers-witness-birth-star-stellar.html Astronomers witness birth of new star from stellar explosion September 12, 2018, Purdue University The explosions of stars, known as supernovae, can be so bright they outshine their host galaxies. They take months or years to fade away, and sometimes, the gaseous remains of the explosion slam into hydrogen-rich gas and temporarily get bright again—but could they remain luminous without any outside interference? That's what Dan Milisavljevic, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Purdue University, believes he saw six years after "SN 2012au" exploded. Read more at: h…

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-trio-nobel-chemistry-prize-evolution.html 'Darwin in a test tube': Trio wins Nobel for harnessing evolution October 3, 2018 US scientists Frances Arnold and George Smith and British researcher Gregory Winter won the Nobel Chemistry Prize on Wednesday for applying the principles of evolution to develop proteins used in everything from new biofuels to to the world's best-selling drug. Arnold, just the fifth woman to clinch chemistry's most prestigious honour since Marie Curie was honoured in 1911, won one half of the nine million Swedish kronor (about $1.01 million or 870,000 euros) award, while Smith and Winter shared the o…

So weird, the outer ring of clouds are moving in opposite direction from the spin of hurricane Florence! https://www.facebook.com/NowThisPolitics/videos/2108675522728834/?notif_id=1536784927931282&notif_t=live_video

Since publication of this story, CERN has suspended Alessandro Strumia from any activities, pending an investigation. A physicist speaking at CERN, the home of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, has sparked outrage after claiming that women are less capable of physics research. Alessandro Strumia at the University of Pisa, Italy, was speaking to an audience of women beginning their careers in science at a CERN workshop on gender and high energy physics. He gave a talk claiming that the reason men are so over-represented in the field of physics is because they are “over-performing”, and that physics was “invented and built by men”. Original: https://s…

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-astronomers-compelling-evidence-moon-solar.html Astronomers find first compelling evidence for a moon outside our solar system October 3, 2018, Columbia University: A pair of Columbia University astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Kepler Space Telescope have assembled compelling evidence for the existence of a moon orbiting a gas-giant planet 8,000 light-years away. In a paper published Oct. 3 in the journal Science Advances, Alex Teachey and David Kipping report that the detection of a candidate exomoon—that is, moons orbiting planets in other star systems—is unusual because of its large size, comparable t…

A Canadian ( U of Waterloo, originally from Guelph ) woman, Donna Strickland, is only the third woman ever ( first in 1903, second was back in 1963 ) to be awarded the Nobel prize in Physics for her work in high energy lasers. The methods she helped develop while doing her PhD in the 80s, 'chirped pulse amplification', reconciles the requirements for short pulses and high power ( without blowing up the laser ). Especially significant for me; she is my age , so we probably attended ( different ) Universities at the same time. Glad that the Nobel Committee is recognizing women's accomplishments in Physics. ( but do they need to wait 60 yrs in between ? )

An expedition to the Atacama Trench has uncovered a wealth of information. They found three new fish species. They do not conform to the preconceived stereotypical image of what a deep-sea fish should look like. Instead of giant teeth and a menacing frame, the fishes that roam in the deepest parts of the ocean are small, translucent, bereft of scales—and highly adept at living where few other organisms can. https://phys.org/news/2018-09-species-fish-extreme-depths-pacific.html#jCp

It is an Atheist Forum, where arrogance and condescension rule. Opinions and facts presented which are contrary to the diktats of Swansont are summarily deleted, with malice. He has a faint orgasm every time he bans someone who doesn't speak and write in accordance with his own views. This is my final post. I am self-banning, denying Mister Petty Atheist the chance to meaningfully ban me.

https://phys.org/news/2018-09-phase-transition-quantum-chromodynamics.html New observations to understand the phase transition in quantum chromodynamics: The building blocks of matter in our universe were formed in the first 10 microseconds of its existence, according to the currently accepted scientific picture. After the Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago, matter consisted mainly of quarks and gluons, two types of elementary particles whose interactions are governed by quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of strong interaction. In the early universe, these particles moved nearly freely in a quark-gluon plasma. Then, in a phase transition, they combined …

It seems Galileo toned down his claims to 'fool' the Inquisition. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06769-4

Here are some exacting shots of Typhoon Manghkut in Hong Kong (erm, without the killing):- https://www.facebook.com/nury.vittachi/videos/10156734007941214/?t=0 https://www.facebook.com/scmp/videos/231922087674097/?t=88 (Shenshen - city across border from Hong Kong) https://www.facebook.com/scmp/videos/268894683750552/?t=0

https://phys.org/news/2018-09-magnetic-chaos-star-forming-clouds.html Magnetic waves create chaos in star-forming clouds September 13, 2018, University of Texas McDonald Observatory New research by Stella Offner, assistant professor of astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin, finds that magnetic waves are an important factor driving the process of star formation within the enormous clouds that birth stars. Her research sheds light on the processes that are responsible for setting the properties of stars, which in turn affects the formation of planets orbiting them, and, ultimately, life on those planets. The research is published in the current is…

https://phys.org/news/2018-09-chemical-analysis-extremely-metal-poor-star.html Researchers conduct chemical analysis of six extremely metal-poor star candidates September 11, 2018 by Tomasz Nowakowski, Phys.org An international team of researchers has conducted a chemical study of six new very metal-poor star candidates in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 12 (SDSS DR12). The new research, available in a paper published August 29 on the arXiv pre-print repository, could help researchers better understand the early stages of chemical evolution of the galaxy. Extremely metal-poor stars (EMPs) are generally perceived by astronomers as the relics …

https://phys.org/news/2018-09-radio-superfast-jet-material-neutron.html Radio observations confirm superfast jet of material from neutron star merger: September 5, 2018, National Radio Astronomy Observatory Precise measurement using a continent-wide collection of National Science Foundation (NSF) radio telescopes has revealed that a narrow jet of particles moving at nearly the speed of light broke out into interstellar space after a pair of neutron stars merged in a galaxy 130 million light-years from Earth. The merger, which occurred in August of 2017, sent gravitational waves rippling through space. It was the first event ever to be detected both by gra…