Science News

Dark energy ‘chameleon trap’ wins £100,000 prize for Nottingham scientist

Archaeologists have confirmed that a papyrus scroll discovered at the Saqquara necropolis site near Cairo last year does indeed contain texts from the Egyptian Book of the Dead— the first time a complete papyrus has been found in a century, according to Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt. The scroll has been dubbed the "Waziri papyrus." It is currently being translated into Arabic. https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/archaeologists-discovered-a-new-papyrus-of-egyptian-book-of-the-dead/ These "books" were actually collections of funerary texts and spells to help the deceased on their journey through the underworld…

A new study suggest dinosaurs might have been much smarter than originally thought! https://www.labroots.com/trending/neuroscience/24431/t-rex-smart-baboon

Viruses are a good food for these bacteria: The consumption of viruses returns energy to food chains | PNAS

Closer To Truth has a new website, which I think is quite well made, visually appealing, and features all the high-quality content the channel is known for. I highly recommend it: https://closertotruth.com

Interesting paper from back in July (how did I miss this?), co-authored by Giorgio Immirzi, one of the foremost experts on GR and quantum gravity: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.04279 This is just the latest paper within an increasingly large body of work that indicates that ‘dark matter’ as a separate phenomenon may be entirely superfluous. The basic idea here is that, under certain specific circumstances, even in the weak-field and low velocity regime, there may be non-negligible GR effects that aren’t found in Newtonian gravity. Hence, sometimes Newtonian gravity is not a valid approximation to GR in the weak field domain - which is the very assumption from which…

Fusion energy breakthrough by US scientists boosts clean power hopes | Financial Times (ft.com)

https://www.quantamagazine.org/asymmetry-detected-in-the-distribution-of-galaxies-20221205/ https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.03625 Now this is very interesting! Despite the 7-sigma significance mentioned in the paper, this will of course require further corroboration. But if this turns out to be a real thing, then it would have far-reaching consequences. Definitely one to watch!

https://www.quantamagazine.org/does-time-really-flow-new-clues-come-from-a-century-old-approach-to-math-20200407/ (This is a pull-quote, but I have to warn that reading the full article may be necessary to follow what Gisin is up to. I can't cut/paste everything on this device, sorry.) Over the past year, the Swiss physicist Nicolas Gisin has published four papers that attempt to dispel the fog surrounding time in physics. As Gisin sees it, the problem all along has been mathematical. Gisin argues that time in general and the time we call the present are easily expressed in a century-old mathematical language called “intuitionist mathematics,” which rejects the…

This certainly sounds like a big deal: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03820-3 5 papers published so far on it: References Rustamkulov, Z. et al. Preprint at arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2211.10487 (2022). Alderson, L. et al. Preprint at arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2211.10488 (2022). Ahrer, E.-M. et al. Preprint at arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2211.10489 (2022). Tsai, S.-M. et al. Preprint at arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2211.10490 (2022). Feinstein, A. D. et al. Preprint at arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2211.10493 (2022). But I would like to sample opinions from local experts.…

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04201-6 "Did physicists create a wormhole in a quantum computer?" I was wondering what anyone here makes of this latest news as published today in Nature? Did they just simulate the transfer of information or did it really happen (both?) How might this affect the search for a theory of quantum gravity?

Space chiefs are to investigate whether electricity could be beamed wirelessly from space into millions of homes. The European Space Agency will this week likely approve a three-year study to see if having huge solar farms in space could work and be cost effective. The eventual aim is to have giant satellites in orbit, each able to generate the same amount of electricity as a power station. ESA's governing council is to consider the idea at its Paris HQ on Tuesday. While several organisations and other space agencies have looked into the idea, the so-called Solaris initiative would be the first to lay the ground for a practical plan to develop a space-…

Naming multiples and submultiples... ---> https://thevaultznews.com/world/scientists-expand-worlds-measuring-unit-system/

Just as with other climate changes where there are feedback effects, we need to watch closely and determine what all the effects might be. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/17/microbes-melting-glaciers-bacteria-ecosystems Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of bacteria are being released by melting glaciers, a study has shown. The microbes being washed downstream could fertilise ecosystems, the researchers said, but needed to be much better studied to identify any potential pathogens. The scientists said the rapid melting of the ice by the climate crisis meant the glaciers and the unique microbial ecosystems they harboured were “dy…

I wonder if this emission spotter tool will be as important and powerful as the reporter in this article is saying "Emissions data a powerful tool in climate change fight" issions data a powerful tool in climate change fighttps://www.rte.ie/news/analysis-and-comment/2022/1109/1335215-cop27/ Can they no longer run and hide from the sies in the sky and the sensors on the ground? Is it a duck shoot now?

Cell biology, volume and reciprocal volume

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/02/opinions/mittermeier-nicklen-oceans-blue-carbon-climate-change-scn-spc-c2e/index.html "Opinion: The ocean’s ‘blue carbon’ can be our secret weapon in fighting climate change" This is the first I have come across this idea. How promising is it? Can we "farm" the seas to sequester carbon from the atmosphere?

Nice comparison image of the two telescopes together. The improvement is definitely noticeable.

Some folks are probably excited about this... https://phys.org/news/2022-06-results-anomaly-elementary-particle.html New scientific results confirm an anomaly seen in previous experiments, which may point to an as-yet-unconfirmed new elementary particle, the sterile neutrino, or indicate the need for a new interpretation of an aspect of standard model physics, such as the neutrino cross section, first measured 60 years ago.

This news may be of interest to the participants in the "Crowded quantum information" thread. The 2022 Nobel has been awarded to J Clauser, A Aspect, and A Zeilinger, for their work in estabilishing that there is no 'local reality'. ( which is not indicative of real non-locality ) The Universe Is Not Locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners Proved It - Scientific American

https://phys.org/news/2018-02-man-made-earthquake-fracking-895m-faults.html Man-made earthquake risk reduced if fracking is 895m from faults February 27, 2018, Durham University The risk of man-made earthquakes due to fracking is greatly reduced if high-pressure fluid injection used to crack underground rocks is 895m away from faults in the Earth's crust, according to new research.The recommendation, from the ReFINE (Researching Fracking) consortium, is based on published microseismic data from 109 fracking operations carried out predominantly in the USA.Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-02-man-made-earthquake-fracking-895m-faults.html#jCp …

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2325638-breast-cancer-is-more-likely-to-spread-during-sleep/ "Breast cancer is more likely to spread during sleep" A very interesting finding. A link to a pdf page in Nature in that that I can't seem to copy and paste....

pictures say more than words : https://www.hwcv.org/empty-pagef738a1ef please reset the headline to Here you can see a Perpetual motion, thank you

BOSTON (AP) — The sex lives of constipated scorpions, cute ducklings with an innate sense of physics, and a life-size rubber moose may not appear to have much in common, but they all inspired the winners of this year’s Ig Nobels, the prize for comical scientific achievement. Held less than a month before the actual Nobel Prizes are announced, Thursday’s 32nd annual Ig Nobel prize ceremony was for the third year in a row a prerecorded affair webcast on the Annals of Improbable Research magazine’s website. The winners, honored in 10 categories, also included scientists who found that when people on a blind date are attracted to each other, their heart rates synchr…

I spotted this on Twitter and decided to share as it is science related 19th to 23rd September is peer review week https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/09/15/ask-the-chefs-is-research-integrity-possible-without-peer-review/ I am not associated with this, just sharing the information. The question "Is Research Integrity Possible without Peer Review?" could make an interesting discussion at some point. Paul