Science News

Thatcham vehicle test track demonstration that current autopilot driverless car can involve itself in a crash situation. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/business-44460980/this-car-is-on-autopilot-what-happens-next

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-einstein-galaxy.html Einstein proved right in another galaxy June 21, 2018, University of Portsmouth: An international team of astronomers have made the most precise test of gravity outside our own solar system. By combining data taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, their results show that gravity in this galaxy behaves as predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, confirming the theory's validity on galactic scales. In 1915 Albert Einstein proposed his general theory of relativity (GR) to explain how gravity works. Since then GR has p…

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-black-hole-clouds-puzzling-features.html One black hole or two? Dust clouds can explain puzzling features of active galactic nuclei: Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), believe clouds of dust, rather than twin black holes, can explain the features found in active galactic nuclei (AGNs). The team publish their results today (14 June) in a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Many large galaxies have an AGN, a small bright central region powered by matter spiralling into a supermassive black hole. When these black holes are vigorously swallowing matter, they are surrounded by …

Not sure if this is in the right section or not, so perhaps a mod can move it if required? Some people that frequent science forums, [obviously the best type] will inevitably say they have a new theory about some aspect of the universe/life etc.They put there ideas in various forcefull ways full of confidence and much bravado, seemingly ignorant of the fact that professional scientists are forever testing and retesting incumbent theories: Afterall that's there job....sometimes they are in error, sometimes they may make mistakes [BICEP2] but surely that is part of the human makeup and should be expected from time to time. Anyway I believe that all those that believe t…

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-astronomers-distant-eruption-black-hole.html Astronomers see distant eruption as black hole destroys star For the first time, astronomers have directly imaged the formation and expansion of a fast-moving jet of material ejected when the powerful gravity of a supermassive black hole ripped apart a star that wandered too close to the cosmic monster. The scientists tracked the event with radio and infrared telescopes, including the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), in a pair of colliding galaxies called Arp 299, nearly 150 million light-years from Earth. At the core of one of the galaxies, a black hole…

Really interesting discovery. Article is easy to follow so please have a look. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02751.pdf

Hello everyone, new to the forum here.. I recently came across a video on YouTube that has got me stumped. It showed an individual at the entrance of some cave where they had a lit torch.. the individual points the torch towards the entrance of the cave and it would die out and have to be re-lit. He did this a few times, and every time, the torch would die out.....Another weird example from the same video was that he then held a handgun that looked like a revolver, pulled the trigger and he could not get the gun to fire a shot even though the trigger was pulled and the gun clicked... then he backs up, turns facing in a direction away from the cave, pulls the trigger and…

https://tokyo3.org/forums/holiday/?main=https%3A//tokyo3.org/forums/holiday/welcome/ The LHC Has Detected The Higgs Boson Again, This Time With a Massive Twist Whoa. MIKE MCRAE 6 JUN 2018 Physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider have made a major new detection of the famous Higgs boson, this time catching details on a rare interaction with one of the heaviest fundamental particles known to physics - the top quark. The brief mingling of these incredibly rare encounters has provided physicists with important information on the nature of mass, and whether there is more to physics than the existing model predicts. Results produced by …

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-magnetic-fields-key-star-formation.html Magnetic fields could hold the key to star formation: Astronomers have discovered new magnetic fields in space, which could shed light on how stars are formed and uncover the mysteries behind one of the most famous celestial images. For the first time, extremely subtle magnetic fields in the Pillars of Creation – a structure made famous thanks to an iconic image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope – have been discovered and mapped. The structure consists of cosmic dust and cold, dense gas that have nurseries of stars forming at their tips. This innovative research has shown that the …

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-horizons-historic-kuiper-belt-flyby.html New Horizons wakes for historic Kuiper Belt flyby June 6, 2018, NASA NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is back "awake" and being prepared for the farthest planetary encounter in history – a New Year's Day 2019 flyby of the Kuiper Belt object nicknamed Ultima Thule. Cruising through the Kuiper Belt more than 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from Earth, New Horizons had been in resource-saving hibernation mode since Dec. 21. Radio signals confirming that New Horizons had executed on-board computer commands to exit hibernation reached mission operations at the Johns Hopkins Applie…

https://newatlas.com/vanishing-star-skip-supernova-black-hole/49725/ Birth of a black hole witnessed as star vanishes without a bang: For the first time, astronomers have witnessed a star disappear right before their eyes. Known as N6946-BH1, the star appears to have collapsed into a black hole without the usual flair of a supernova, which not only marks the first time scientists have witnessed the birth of a black hole, but could change our understanding of the life and death of stars. According to conventional thinking, when a star exhausts its energy supply, it violently ejects most of its matter outwards in a supernova, before collapsing in on itself to…

https://newatlas.com/neutron-star-collision-black-hole/54861/ NASA sheds light on strange object created in cosmic collision: In August 2017, astronomers were treated to one of the most spectacular stellar light shows ever seen – a collision between two neutron stars. The smashup was so powerful it sent gravitational ripples through the very fabric of spacetime, and produced flares in visible light, radio waves, x-rays and a gamma ray burst. Now that things have quietened down, astronomers have studied the strange object created in the cosmic collision. The LIGO facility was the first to notice something big was happening. On August 17 last year, the instru…

https://www.quantamagazine.org/evidence-found-for-a-new-fundamental-particle-20180601/

The official death toll in Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria was 64. This number only included direct effects. Kishone et al. investigated whether the hurricane could have contributed to overall change in mortality e.g. due to displacement, loss of infrastructure or interrupted health care. Based on a survey from 3299 household they calculated an excess moratlity of 4645 excess deaths caused by the Hurricane Maria. The authors also asserted that due to survivor bias this number is on the conservative side. Kischone et al "Mortality in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria", JAMA, 2018, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsa1803972

Could a prehuman industrial civilization have existed on the Earth millions of years ago? If it did how could we detect it's existence? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-an-industrial-prehuman-civilization-have-existed-on-earth-before-ours/

Some birds have been found to cooperate in multi species group that guards against invasion from other birds new to the area of both species! https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180521143827.htm

https://phys.org/news/2018-05-particle-rotating-spacetime.html How a particle may stand still in rotating spacetime When a massive astrophysical object, such as a boson star or black hole, rotates, it can cause the surrounding spacetime to rotate along with it due to the effect of frame dragging. In a new paper, physicists have shown that a particle with just the right properties may stand perfectly still in a rotating spacetime if it occupies a "static orbit"—a ring of points located a critical distance from the center of the rotating spacetime. The physicists, Lucas G. Collodel, Burkhard Kleihaus, and Jutta Kunz, at the University of Oldenburg in Germany,…

https://phys.org/news/2018-05-bone-trove-denmark-story-barbarian.html Bone trove in Denmark tells story of 'Barbarian' battle May 22, 2018 Find assemblages of femur, tibia and fibula, and two small stones. Credit: PNAS Thousands of bones from boys and men likely killed in a ferocious battle 2,000 years ago have been unearthed from a bog in Denmark, researchers said Monday. Without local written records to explain, or a battlefield to scour for evidence, experts are nevertheless piecing together a story of the Germanic people, often described by the Romans as "barbarians" for their violent nature. Four pelvic bones strung on a stick were among…

This is still highly controversial in the science world, so if the mods and/or admins see it as more appropriate for "speculation" then I welcome it removal to that section. My thoughts on this have always been that no known laws of physics were ever broken, rather that some apparent as yet unknown aspect could be at work. The following article and hypothetical seems to support those thoughts........ https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-have-a-weird-new-idea-about-how-the-impossible-em-drive-could-produce-thrust This Overlooked Theory Could Be The Missing Piece That Explains How The EM Drive Works What if it doesn't break the laws of physics?…

https://www.sciencealert.com/lightning-inside-ferocious-hurricane-blasted-beam-antimatter-earth-gamma-ray-flash-positrons/amp Hard core. They report having recorded gamma ray flashes with up to 20 MeV, which could have only been Matter-Antimatter annihilations. Since Positrons and Electron annihilate with 511 keV each, this is entirely possible. They're still unsure how exactly the positrons were created in the storm. My best guess would be that a few virtual electron-positron pairs were separated and the positrons were accelerated too fast toward the earth to interact with electrons in their vicinity. Well, just because it's my best guess doesn't mean it's a …

https://phys.org/news/2018-05-alma-most-distant-oxygen-universe.html Astronomers find evidence for stars forming just 250 million years after Big Bang May 16, 2018, National Radio Astronomy Observatory Not long after the Big Bang, the first generations of stars began altering the chemical make-up of primitive galaxies, slowly enriching the interstellar medium with basic elements such as oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. Finding the earliest traces of these common elements would shed important light on the chemical evolution of galaxies, including our own. New observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) reveal the faint, te…

https://phys.org/news/2018-05-astronomers-fastest-growing-black-hole-space.html Astronomers find fastest-growing black hole known in space May 15, 2018, Australian National University Astronomers at ANU have found the fastest-growing black hole known in the Universe, describing it as a monster that devours a mass equivalent to our sun every two days. The astronomers have looked back more than 12 billion years to the early dark ages of the Universe, when this supermassive black hole was estimated to be the size of about 20 billion suns with a one per cent growth rate every one million years. "This black hole is growing so rapidly that it's shini…

What can be done with this Hawaii volcano to prevent future loss of property? Got to be some Geo Physicists or Engineers on a site like this. Seems like an investment in a horizontal drilling rig to reach the nearest lava tube and give it every reason flow out into the sea (and admittedly the million dollar drilling rig). Hence the description "investment." Assume economics is no major issue. Surely something can be done to mitigate future problems. Pump a benign gas down there to force a controlled eruption? Pump Water down? Open artificial fissures in unpopulated areas to release pressure? Giant Slurpee Machine and pump the flavorful ice slurry into a ma…

This is another case where we discovered the asteroid, then lost it for several years, only to find it again just a week ago. Which would seem to indicate that just because NASA may have discovered 98% of the NEOs larger than 1 km, it does not mean that they know where those NEOs are now. Of the 17,785 NEOs (as of March 1, 2018) that NASA has discovered, I would be very interested in knowing the percentage of NEOs that NASA has lost since their discovery.

This BBC report is interesting as it is about a working test installation to inject atmospheric CO2 into volcanic basalt rock, permanently removing it from the atmosphere. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-43789527