Science News

Published in Nature today. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06692-3 Simpler language version from NASA news site: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1771/discovery-alert-watch-the-synchronized-dance-of-a-6-planet-system/ The discovery: Six planets orbit their central star in a rhythmic beat, a rare case of an “in sync” gravitational lockstep that could offer deep insight into planet formation and evolution. Key facts: A star smaller and cooler than our Sun hosts a truly strange family of planets: six “sub-Neptunes” – possibly smaller versions of our own Neptune – moving in a cyclic rhythm. This orbital waltz repeats itself so precisely it …

“In a paper published today in Nature, the ALPHA collaboration at CERN’s Antimatter Factory shows that, within the precision of their experiment, atoms of antihydrogen – a positron orbiting an antiproton – fall to Earth in the same way as their matter equivalents.” https://home.cern/news/news/physics/alpha-experiment-cern-observes-influence-gravity-antimatter

Earlier this year I watched the BBC Earth series, presented by Chris Packham. One new theory was presented of many years of almost continuous rain on the early basalt eruption surfaces, leading to chemical weathering of the basalt removing significant quantities of acid greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, from the atmoushphere and chemically 'fixing' it into the ground. Last Sunday the BBC Countryfile programme had an article about trail replication of this process by spreading the waste products of the aggregate industry (ground up basalt) onto farmland. The greatly increased active surface of such basalt powder not only reacts quite quickly (ie at…

Don has died aged 92. Here is his story.

Do super dense asteroids point to the possibility of heavy elements not found on Earth? 33 Polyhymnia is thought to be 3 times as dense as the densest element on the earth Osmium. Osmium is 22.59 grams per cubic centimeter with an atomic number of 76 but 33 Polyhymnia seems to be made of something close to three times as dense as Osmium. This would correspond to an element that has an atomic number of around 164. https://earthsky.org/space/ultradense-asteroids-polyhymnia-cudos-superheavy Should we be thinking of visiting this asteroid to see if we can obtain samples of this unknown element?

Imagine you could go back in time 4.6 billion years and take a picture of our Sun just as it was being born. What would it look like? Well, you can get a clue from this glorious new image acquired by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Towards the centre of this object, called HH212, is a star coming into existence that is probably no more than 50,000 years old. The scene would have looked much the same when our Sun was a similar age. You can't actually see the glow from the protostar itself because it's hidden within a dense, spinning disc of gas and dust. All you get are the pinky-red jets that it's shooting out in polar opposite directions. …

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67101176 Towards the end of the article there is almost a footnote But noting the political situation here and what has already happened to HS2 is this really the first step (sorry about the pun) towards cancelling ?

In the last couple of weeks, I've seen reports on the news of spiralling insurance prices, for cover on electric cars. And the figures they were giving were formidable. People were complaining of their insurance renewal quotes for their electric vehicles being four and five times the previous price, some even more. The reports were giving the rationale that insurance companies were giving was the much higher repair costs involved in claims on electric vehicles, not a higher incidence of claims. Maybe the industry isn't ready for major repairs on electrics? If that's the case, the insurance price explosion could be a blip, or maybe it's going to be a permanent cost, o…

Are they right? Personally I wonder if they haven't already found it in New York https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-66970292

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66656369 Robots are trained to help revive coral reefs

Hi Link to this was posted on the Fediverse earlier, so am posting here too. Hopefully spark discussion but also raise awareness of this, as we are ll interested in science we need to be able to maintain the valuable trust in research. Seems that there is a lot of bad science out there that is being published, however this article relates to the USA so not sure how prevalent this is globally. Just seems concerning that we may end up losing trust and this could potentially result in less funding if it is seen as not value for taxpayers money. https://theconversation.com/rising-number-of-predatory-academic-journals-undermines-research-and-public-t…

https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/conspiracy-theory-review/?utm_content=FOC2&utm_campaign=Thursday 6 April 2023_2506954_Focus_Newsletters_24748918&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Adestra

The US Government appears to be taking UAPs/UFOs seriously, these papers suggest that the US government is taking Unidentified Objects seriously and even suggesting they exhibit technology beyond our own. There papers dance around UAPs being extraterrestrial but do suggest they might be extraordinary events at the very least. The video is short but explains the premise. I still have to come down on the side of these objects being most likely drones from adversary nations but this is almost as disturbing as the extraterrestrial hypothesis. https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/…

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/05/world/ancient-human-population-collapse-scn/index.html Not sure how accepted this is, but seems interesting. Especially the 100,000+ years we may have balanced on the edge of the precipice.

Stanford president resigns over manipulated research, will retract at least three papers (stanforddaily.com)

The odd behavior of a subatomic particle may shake up physics (msn.com)

Summary: "The serotonin theory of depression started to be widely promoted in the 1990s, coinciding with a push to prescribe more SSRIs." News: https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/depression-serotonin/ The article links to a "systematic umbrella review" which has altmetric 20 of 166,614 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0

A paper was just published estimating heat-associated deaths in Europe during 2022, which was the hottest year on record until this year. Overall, the authors calculated 61,672 (37,643-86,807 CI 95%) heat-related deaths. Considering that the predictions indicate that things are not going to be better (quite the contrary), it show the immediate impact of heat on humans, even without considering broader ecological implications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02419-z

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/06/nanograv-picks-up-signal-of-cosmic-choir-of-supermassive-black-holes/ Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of spacetime predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, first detected in 2015. But an expected corresponding low-frequency gravitational wave background—a kind of "hum" comprised of a chorus of gravitational waves, most likely emanating from binary pairs of supermassive black holes—has proven more elusive. Now the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) has announced the first evidence of this gravitational wave background. The results and related analyses …

https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.06301v1 Evidence for Near Ambient Superconductivity in the Lu-N-H System Nilesh P. Salke, Alexander C. Mark, Muhtar Ahart, Russell J. Hemley Download PDF Comments: 11 pages, 7 figures Subjects: Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) Cite as: arXiv:2306.06301 [cond-mat.supr-con] (or arXiv:2306.06301v1 [cond-mat.supr-con] for this version) https://…

Fascinating article here, relating to phosphorous being found on one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus. Phosphorous is a key building block of life and is located in Enceladus' subsurface oceans. Data was beamed back recently by the Cassini Mission. Here's the article from JPL: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-cassini-data-reveals-building-block-for-life-in-enceladus-ocean This page has a cool interactive walkthrough which describes how they first noticed the plumes of ice crystals, then identified the sub-surface oceans which likely contain liquid H20, and how confirmation was established as to the presence of phosphorous. The paper: https://www.nature.com…

Curly hair may have been a crucial adaptation for early humans living in equatorial Africa, as it provided effective protection from the sun’s heat and minimized the need for sweating, according to a new study published in the journal PNAS. This passive cooling mechanism likely allowed for brain growth by conserving water and reducing heat. Full story available here: https://newsnotfound.com/study-finds-curly-hair-may-have-been-crucial-for-early-humans-in-equatorial-africa/

Researchers at the University of Southampton have discovered several distinct groups of spinosaurs that lived in southern England over 100 million years ago. These spinosaurs were semi-aquatic and primarily fed on fish. Advanced techniques like CT scanning and 3D reconstructions were used in the study, leading to the discovery of these previously unknown spinosaur groups. Full story: https://newsnotfound.com/new-study-reveals-previously-unknown-spinosaurs-in-southern-england/

This article doesn't really do the issue justice but it does touch on something that has bugged me about claims about unacceptable waste from a shift to EV's - the full range of waste that comes from the existing ICE vehicle use and manufacturing streams - including the FF's used to refine FF's, not just fuel used directly in the vehicle, and things like coal ash from manufacturing (aka fly ash, high in heavy metals that, after CO2 may be the 2nd largest single form of waste)are often passed over. Presuming high levels of future battery recycling may be like presuming coal ash will be safely managed, ie wishful thinking, yet it is a clear policy objective in many nat…