discuss Science & Technology news & discussion

[CraigD]

Post and discuss interesting articles & videos about science and technology.

You don't need to be an expert - just interested in the wonders of modern science, technology, and the history of these fields.

Please keep it rational, and post articles from reputable sources.
Try not to editorialise headlines and keep the copy to just a paragraph with a link to the original source. When quoting excerpts from articles, I think the best method is to italicise the copy, and include a link to the source.

Have some fun with your comments and discussions... just keep the sources legitimate.

Other threads:
The Break Room has a number of other popular threads, so there is no need to post material here that is better suited to these other threads:

- Covid19-Coronavirus updates and news
- Conspiracy Thread Free For All
- The *religious* discussion thread

Please enjoy!

 

[koolishman]

Mars on Earth: Turkish lake may hold clues to ancient life on planet

As NASA’s rover Perseverance explores the surface of Mars, scientists hunting for signs of ancient life on the distant planet are using data gathered on a mission much closer to home at a lake in southwest Turkey.

NASA says the minerals and rock deposits at Salda are the nearest match on earth to those around the Jezero Crater where the spacecraft landed and which is believed to have once been flooded with water.

Information gathered from Lake Salda may help the scientists as they search for fossilised traces of microbial life preserved in sediment thought to have been deposited around the delta and the long-vanished lake it once fed.

“Salda ... will serve as a powerful analogue in which we can learn and interrogate,” Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, told Reuters.

 

[CraigD]

Neanderthals Vanished From Europe Thousands of Years Earlier Than We Thought

Neanderthal fossils from a cave in Belgium believed to belong to the last survivors of their species ever discovered in Europe are thousands of years older than once thought, a new study said Monday.

Previous radiocarbon dating of the remains from the Spy Cave yielded ages as recent as approximately 24,000 years ago, but the new testing pushes the clock back to between 44,200 to 40,600 years ago.

Co-lead author Thibaut Deviese from the University of Oxford and Aix-Marseille University told AFP he and colleagues had developed a more robust method to prepare samples, which was better able to exclude contaminants.

Genetic sequencing was meanwhile able to show that a Neanderthal shoulder bone previously dated at 28,000 years ago was heavily contaminated with bovine DNA, suggesting the bone had been preserved with a glue made from cattle bones.

Read on...

https://www.sciencealert.com/neande...pe-thousands-of-years-earlier-than-we-thought

 

[CraigD]

Snakeskin inspires new, friction-reducing material

A research team led by CU Boulder has designed a new kind of synthetic "skin" as slippery as the scales of a snake.

The research, published recently in the American Chemical Society journal Applied Materials & Interfaces, addresses an underappreciated problem in engineering: Friction.

Yifu Ding, senior author of the new paper, explained that every day, machines from robots to cars lose tremendous amounts of energy simply because their parts rub together. To try to reduce that loss, he and his colleagues took cues from nature—specifically, its most slithery members.

"A snake's body is soft enough that it can twist itself into all kinds of shapes," said Ding, a professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering. "It can also move really fast if it needs to, in part because its skin has such low friction."

In their latest study, the researchers developed a tool called solid-liquid interfacial polymerization (SLIP) that allows them to lay a thin layer of skin onto existing surfaces like rubber or stretchy materials called elastomers. That layer looks a lot like the scales of a snake and can turn an otherwise sticky surface into a slip hazard.

The technology could be a boon for machines that battle friction but can't tolerate getting wet.

"There are a lot of new engineering applications, like soft robots or wearable sensors, where you can't use these traditional liquid lubricants," Ding said. "Rather, you have to modify the surface itself."

That's now possible, thanks to the oft-hated snake.

Read on...

https://phys.org/news/2021-03-snakeskin-friction-reducing-material.html

 

[CraigD]

How Your Brain Registers Loneliness Could Have a Strange Link to Wisdom

New insights into the neural activity linked to loneliness could help us improve the way we treat it, researchers say – and reduce the numerous physical and mental health impacts associated with feelings of being lonely.

Our brains react to loneliness in an almost exactly opposite way to the way they react to feelings of wisdom, according to a new study. This adds to a growing body of research that suggests that the wiser we think we are, the less lonely we feel.

..

Volunteers were given a self-assessment survey to evaluate their feelings of loneliness and wisdom, and then asked to complete a simple cognitive test while a selection of faces with positive (happy), negative (sad), threatening (angry), or neutral expressions were displayed in the background.

The self-assessed lonelier individuals were most distracted by the angry faces – their TPJ cognitive processes slowed down. The wiser individuals, however, responded more to the happy faces, which sped up their TPJ cognitive processes. The neural reactions were in many ways opposites depending on whether someone was feeling lonely or wise.

The researchers also found that the lonely-angry reaction caused more activity in the brain's left superior parietal cortex (important for allocating attention), while the wise-happy reaction caused more activity in the brain's left insula (which handles social characteristics such as empathy).

Read on...

https://www.sciencealert.com/how-the-brain-responds-to-loneliness-could-help-us-tackle-it

 

[CraigD]

Russia turns away from NASA, says it will work with China on a Moon base

China wants a long-term presence on the Moon in the 2030s.

The heads of the Chinese and Russian space agencies signed an agreement on Tuesday to work together to build a "scientific" station on the Moon.

Under terms of a memorandum of understanding, the two countries will cooperate on creation of an "International Lunar Science Station" and plan to invite other countries to participate. The agreement was signed by Zhang Kejian, director of the China National Space Administration, and Dmitry Rogozin, the chief of Russia's space corporation, Roscosmos. The agreement was announced by Roscosmos.

https://arstechnica.com/science/202...-will-work-together-to-build-a-lunar-station/



China, Russia ink MOU on building international scientific research station on moon: CNSA

China and Russia have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on joint construction of an international lunar research station, the Global Times learned from the China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Tuesday.

Approved by governments of the two countries, Zhang Kejian, head of the CNSA, signed the document with his Russian counterpart, General Director of the Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities Dmitry Rogozin, via a virtual link.

The two sides will uphold the principle of joint consultation, construction and sharing, to push forward cooperation concerning the building of the international research station on moon, according to a statement that the CNSA sent to the Global Times. And the project will be “open to nations that are interested in the project as well as all partners of the international community.”

The project aims to enhance scientific exchanges and injects impetus to human’s peaceful exploration and use of space, read the statement.

The international lunar scientific and research station will be a comprehensive base for long-term, autonomous experiments, providing a platform that is tasked to enable exploration and use of moon, and a slew of basic scientific experiments and technology verification projects either on the lunar surface or in the lunar orbit, said the CNSA.

Using the accumulated experience in space science, R&D and use of space equipment and space technology, China and Russia will jointly formulate the roadmap for building the moon station, work closely in planning, design, implementing and operations of the station, which also includes promoting the project to the international aerospace community.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202103/1217875.shtml

 

[CraigD]

Funnel-web spider venom may one day help save the lives of heart transplant patients

Funnel-webs on K'gari have been genetically isolated from the mainland for a long time, and their venom has developed a unique peptide profile with a labyrinthine chemical composition, according to Professor King.

"It is one of the most complex venoms that has ever been seen. There are up to 3,000 [different] molecules in the venom of a single spider."

This molecule acts on the ion channels in neurons. Sort of like a telephone exchange operator, it can start and stop messages from getting through.

The scientists suspected that this molecule could buy time against cell death, especially where cell death is caused by lack of oxygen when circulation has stopped.

"In rat models of stroke, we can give the peptide [to a rat] post-stroke, and we've shown that it actually prevents further brain damage from occurring," Dr Saez says.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science...m-molecule-heart-transplant-catalyst/13206336

 

[CraigD]

I'm glad you raised this point.

It's essentially a giant centrifuge that may address some short term issues of weightlessness, but a centrifuge is not a long-term replacement for gravity. We evolved to live on a planet with 1G.

We still don't understand what gravity really is.

I hope they pull this off so we can better understand the long term effects of artificial gravity on the human body.

Thanks for the heads-up @Cannuck I'm going to keep an eye on this

Is it a coincidence that this news of artificial gravity simulation was announced today following our discussion on the weekend? Perhaps the guys at NASA and Blue Origin are reading this thread

Blue Origin's spinning New Shepard capsule to simulate lunar gravity

For NASA and anyone else developing technologies for use on the Moon, opportunities to test them out beforehand in lunar-like conditions are rather limited. A newly announced upgrade to Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket system will serve as a new type of testbed for these efforts, offering minutes of simulated lunar gravity by spinning through suborbital space.

As part of the company's dealings with NASA, it will improve the capabilities of its New Shepard rocket system to further the agency's ambitions relating to lunar exploration. As it stands, NASA has the capacity to simulate lunar gravity on suborbital vehicles, but only for seconds at a time and with limited payload size.

The upgrades to New Shepard will significantly expand these testing windows, enabling the rocket to engage its reaction control system to cause the capsule to rotate in suborbital space, turning it into a large centrifuge. To start out, Blue Origin will attempt to make 11 rotations per minute and provide more than two minutes of continuous lunar gravity conditions.

Read on...

https://newatlas.com/space/blue-origin-new-shepard-simulate-lunar-gravity/

 

[CraigD]

All the New Aircraft Carriers that Are Under Construction

United States of America
Secretary of the Navy has called on the service to build up to six light aircraft carriers, which would increase the number of aircraft carriers in the fleet in a cost-effective way. The Navy currently fields a fleet of 12 aircraft carriers.

Russia
The Russian aircraft carrier Project 23000E Shtorm, which is planned to enter service with the Russian Navy in the next decade, will be equipped the S-500 anti-aircraft missile-system.

France
France’s next-generation aircraft carrier will be nuclear-powered and replace the national fleet’s flagship warship, the Charles de Gaulle, in 2038.

China
The Chinese Navy, which is the world’s largest Navy, currently fields a fleet of 2 aircraft carriers, Liaoning and Shandong. Meanwhile China's third aircraft carrier was under construction at the Shipyards at Shanghai.

Brazil
The Brazilian navy has reclassified its PHM Atlântico (A140) landing platform helicopter ship as a multipurpose aircraft carrier under the name of NAM Atlântico.

United Kingdom
The Royal Navy is continuing course on its plans to field a force of two carriers. The first carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth will conducting the first operational deployment next year. The second carrier HMS Prince of Wales. Each of the two carriers will carry 12 F-35B's, with the ability to embark up to 36 of the fighters.

Japan
Estimated at $28 million the modifications to Izumo include a cleared and reinforced flight deck to support additional weight, added aircraft guidance lights, and heat-resistant deck sections to allow for vertical landings by F-35Bs. Izumo's sister ship, Kaga, will also be converted to an aircraft carrier, though no timeline has been released for her modifications.

Italy
The Italian Navy’s new multirole and multipurpose amphibious vessel Trieste is also referred to as an aircraft carrier by as it is expected to be capable of carrying and operating F-35B short-takeoff and vertical landing aircraft. Trieste will be delivered in 2022.

South Korea
South Korea Is Packing Its First Aircraft Carrier with F-35s. South Korea has announced it will build the country's first true aircraft carrier. The unnamed ship will be less than one-third the size of an American supercarrier, but it will still carry up to 15 fighter jets.

India
Indigenous Aircraft Carrier-1 (IAC-1), began construction in 2005. The ship has recently been named INS Vikrant and would be fully operational before the end of 2022.

 

[CraigD]

Make or break: building soft materials with DNA

DNA molecules are not fixed objects – they are constantly getting broken up and glued back together to adopt new shapes. Davide Michieletto explains how this process can be harnessed to create a new generation of “topologically active” materials.

Read on...

https://physicsworld.com/a/make-or-break-building-soft-materials-with-dna/

 

[Cannuck]

Neanderthals Vanished From Europe Thousands of Years Earlier Than We Thought

Documentary: Who were the Neanderthals?

 

[CraigD]

Problematic internet use and teen depression are closely linked

Most teenagers don't remember life before the internet. They have grown up in a connected world, and being online has become one of their main sources of learning, entertaining and socializing.

As many previous studies have pointed out, and as many parents worry, this reality does not come risk-free. Whereas time on the internet can be informative, instructive and even pleasant, there is already significant literature on the potential harm caused by young children's problematic internet use (PIU).

However, a new study led by István Tóth-Király, a Horizon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Substantive-Methodological Synergy Research Laboratory in Concordia's Department of Psychology, is one of only a few that examines PIU's effects on older adolescents. The paper was co-written by professor of psychology Alexandre Morin and Lauri Hietajärvi and Katariina Salmela-Aro of the University of Helsinki.

The paper, published in the journal Child Development, looks at data gathered by a longitudinal study of 1,750 high school students in Helsinki over three years.

It begins by asking three big questions: what were some of the predictors or determinants of PIU? How did PIU change over the course of late adolescence, in this case, ages 16-19? And what are the consequences of PIU among the age group?

Read on...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210309153855.htm

 

[koolishman]

Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

Astrophysicist at Göttingen University discovers new theoretical hyper-fast soliton solutions

If travel to distant stars within an individual’s lifetime is going to be possible, a means of faster-than-light propulsion will have to be found. To date, even recent research about superluminal (faster-than-light) transport based on Einstein’s theory of general relativity would require vast amounts of hypothetical particles and states of matter that have “exotic” physical properties such as negative energy density. This type of matter either cannot currently be found or cannot be manufactured in viable quantities. In contrast, new research carried out at the University of Göttingen gets around this problem by constructing a new class of hyper-fast ‘solitons’ using sources with only positive energies that can enable travel at any speed. This reignites debate about the possibility of faster-than-light travel based on conventional physics. The research is published in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity.

The author of the paper, Dr Erik Lentz, analysed existing research and discovered gaps in previous ‘warp drive’ studies. Lentz noticed that there existed yet-to-be explored configurations of space-time curvature organized into ‘solitons’ that have the potential to solve the puzzle while being physically viable. A soliton – in this context also informally referred to as a 'warp bubble’ – is a compact wave that maintains its shape and moves at constant velocity. Lentz derived the Einstein equations for unexplored soliton configurations (where the space-time metric’s shift vector components obey a hyperbolic relation), finding that the altered space-time geometries could be formed in a way that worked even with conventional energy sources. In essence, the new method uses the very structure of space and time arranged in a soliton to provide a solution to faster-than-light travel, which – unlike other research – would only need sources with positive energy densities. No “exotic” negative energy densities needed.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6382/abe692

 

[koolishman]

Ancient Earth was a water world

Across the ages, sea levels have risen and fallen with temperatures—but Earth’s total surface water was always assumed to be constant. Now, evidence is mounting that some 3 billion to 4 billion years ago, the planet’s oceans held nearly twice as much water—enough to submerge today’s continents above the peak of Mount Everest. The flood could have primed the engine of plate tectonics and made it more difficult for life to start on land.

Rocks in today’s mantle, the thick layer of rock beneath the crust, are thought to sequester an ocean’s worth of water or more in their mineral structures. But early in Earth’s history, the mantle, warmed by radioactivity, was four times hotter. Recent work using hydraulic presses has shown that many minerals would be unable to hold as much hydrogen and oxygen at mantle temperatures and pressures. “That suggests the water must have been somewhere else,” says Junjie Dong, a graduate student in mineral physics at Harvard University who led a model, based on those lab experiments, that was published today in AGU Advances. “And the most likely reservoir is the surface.”

 

[CraigD]

Ancient Earth was a water world

Across the ages, sea levels have risen and fallen with temperatures—but Earth’s total surface water was always assumed to be constant. Now, evidence is mounting that some 3 billion to 4 billion years ago, the planet’s oceans held nearly twice as much water—enough to submerge today’s continents above the peak of Mount Everest. The flood could have primed the engine of plate tectonics and made it more difficult for life to start on land.

Rocks in today’s mantle, the thick layer of rock beneath the crust, are thought to sequester an ocean’s worth of water or more in their mineral structures. But early in Earth’s history, the mantle, warmed by radioactivity, was four times hotter. Recent work using hydraulic presses has shown that many minerals would be unable to hold as much hydrogen and oxygen at mantle temperatures and pressures. “That suggests the water must have been somewhere else,” says Junjie Dong, a graduate student in mineral physics at Harvard University who led a model, based on those lab experiments, that was published today in AGU Advances. “And the most likely reservoir is the surface.”

The atmosphere would have been quite humid given the higher temperatures, but I have no idea how much water that would account for.


Today:

One estimate of the volume of water in the atmosphere at any one time is about 3,100 cubic miles (mi3) or 12,900 cubic kilometers (km3). That may sound like a lot, but it is only about 0.001 percent of the total Earth's water volume of about 332,500,000 mi3 (1,385,000,000 km3), as shown in the table below. If all of the water in the atmosphere rained down at once, it would only cover the globe to a depth of 2.5 centimeters, about 1 inch.

https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/...ce_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects

 

[koolishman]

Weed production in the United States puffs out heat-trapping emissions.

Using weed recreationally might change the climate inside your head. But cannabis production is generating large amounts of gases that heat up Earth’s physical climate.

Indoor cannabis farming is booming in the United States thanks to the legalization of the drug in Colorado and elsewhere. Jason Quinn and his colleagues at Colorado State University in Fort Collins looked at how much electricity and natural gas are needed in various states to grow marijuana in an artificial indoor climate, which allows for a consistent product in any weather. The researchers then calculated the greenhouse-gas emissions associated with this energy consumption.

The team found that the energy required to yield one kilogram of dried cannabis flower produces the equivalent of 2–5 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Moving weed production from indoor facilities to greenhouses and the great outdoors would help to shrink the carbon footprint of the nation’s legal cannabis industry, the researchers say.

 

[koolishman]

Research shows we’re surprisingly similar to Earth’s first animals

The earliest multicellular organisms may have lacked heads, legs, or arms, but pieces of them remain inside of us today, new research shows.

According to a UC Riverside study, 555-million-year-old oceanic creatures from the Ediacaran period share genes with today’s animals, including humans.

“None of them had heads or skeletons. Many of them probably looked like three-dimensional bathmats on the sea floor, round discs that stuck up,” said Mary Droser, a geology professor at UCR. “These animals are so weird and so different, it’s difficult to assign them to modern categories of living organisms just by looking at them, and it’s not like we can extract their DNA — we can’t.”

 

[koolishman]

The supposedly oldest impact crater on Earth isn’t a crater after all

It was a great story. The authors of a 2012 study proposed that 3 billion years ago – before multi-cellular life appeared on Earth – a giant meteorite plummeted through the atmosphere. It punched through the Earth’s surface into the deep crust in what is now west Greenland.

Massive heat generated on impact instantaneously melted rocks in a 50 km radius. Earthquakes shook the surviving rocks so violently that they were pulverized beyond recognition. The Earth’s mantle melted and magmas surged up into the impact zone. Meanwhile, from above, seawater poured into the crater and changed the chemical composition of the screamingly hot rocks.

If this was true, it would be by far the oldest recognized impact crater on Earth – more than 800 million years older than the next oldest, the Yarrabubba crater in Western Australia – and it would give us a window into studying the ancient impacts that shaped the early history of Earth.

So, as an international group of geologists from Greenland, Denmark, Canada, and Australia, embarking on making a modern geological map of this same region, we were eager to see these remarkable rocks. But when we did, we were surprised to find that they looked like many other ancient rocks we had worked on in other parts of the world with no particularly unusual features that would obviously suggest an impact.

“All the normal criteria used for evaluating impact structures, especially the microstructures in zircon, all those were absent,” says Yakymchuk. “You have to take everything together and say, okay, what is the simplest explanation for all the features we see? And the simplest explanation is that this is not an impact.”

 

[koolishman]

SLS: Nasa assembles twin boosters for its 'megarocket'

Nasa has completed the assembly of two booster rockets that will help power its gigantic, next-generation launch system - the SLS.

The SLS, or Space Launch System, is the rocket that will return astronauts to the Moon under the US Artemis project.

Over the course of several months, workers at Florida's Kennedy Space Center have vertically stacked the booster rockets' 10 segments.

When operational, the SLS will be the most powerful rocket in the world.

It will be capable of producing up to 8.8 million pounds of thrust, making it 15% more powerful than the Saturn V rocket that lofted the Apollo lunar missions.

The SLS consists of a huge core stage with four powerful engines at its base and the two solid rocket boosters (SRBs) attached on either side.


The two completed SRBs at Kennedy Space Center will fly on the maiden launch of the SLS - known as Artemis 1 - which is scheduled for late 2021.

 

[koolishman]

Engineers propose solar-powered lunar ark as 'modern global insurance policy'


University of Arizona researcher Jekan Thanga is taking scientific inspiration from an unlikely source: the biblical tale of Noah's Ark. Rather than two of every animal, however, his solar-powered ark on the moon would store cryogenically frozen seed, spore, sperm and egg samples from 6.7 million Earth species.

Thanga and a group of his undergraduate and graduate students outline the lunar ark concept, which they call a "modern global insurance policy," in a paper presented over the weekend during the IEEE Aerospace Conference.

 

[Cannuck]

Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

This is what you might expect to hear at warp speed (I like to cut out the mid & high bass ):

https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/whiteNoiseGenerator.php?c=0&l=99898073122013080000

 

[CraigD]

People with 'mind blindness' are harder to scare, study shows

People with aphantasia—that is, the inability to visualize mental images—are harder to spook with scary stories, a new UNSW Sydney study shows.

The study, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, tested how aphantasic people reacted to reading distressing scenarios, like being chased by a shark, falling off a cliff, or being in a plane that's about to crash.

The researchers were able to physically measure each participant's fear response by monitoring changing skin conductivity levels—in other words, how much the story made a person sweat. This type of test is commonly used in psychology research to measure the body's physical expression of emotion.

According to the findings, scary stories lost their fear factor when the readers couldn't visually imagine the scene—suggesting imagery may have a closer link to emotions than scientists previously thought.

"We found the strongest evidence yet that mental imagery plays a key role in linking thoughts and emotions," says Professor Joel Pearson, senior author on the paper and Director of UNSW Science's Future Minds Lab.

"In all of our research to date, this is by far the biggest difference we've found between people with aphantasia and the general population."

Read on...

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-03-people-mind-harder.html

 

[CraigD]

This is what you might expect to hear at warp speed (I like to cut out the mid & high bass ):

https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/whiteNoiseGenerator.php?c=0&l=99898073122013080000

 

[CraigD]

The Fukushima disaster in maps and charts

Ten years after Japan’s deadly earthquake and tsunami, we take a look at how the disaster unfolded.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/10/fukushima-disaster-in-maps-and-charts


I remember watching a live feed from a helicopter that was following the wave as it rolled in towards the shore, and then when it hit land it just kept going and going, sweeping everything in its path. Truly horrific footage.


EDIT:
Here's the footage of the tsunami wave rolling towards land:

 

[CraigD]

SLS: Nasa assembles twin boosters for its 'megarocket'

Nasa has completed the assembly of two booster rockets that will help power its gigantic, next-generation launch system - the SLS.

The SLS, or Space Launch System, is the rocket that will return astronauts to the Moon under the US Artemis project.

Over the course of several months, workers at Florida's Kennedy Space Center have vertically stacked the booster rockets' 10 segments.

When operational, the SLS will be the most powerful rocket in the world.

It will be capable of producing up to 8.8 million pounds of thrust, making it 15% more powerful than the Saturn V rocket that lofted the Apollo lunar missions.

The SLS consists of a huge core stage with four powerful engines at its base and the two solid rocket boosters (SRBs) attached on either side.


The two completed SRBs at Kennedy Space Center will fly on the maiden launch of the SLS - known as Artemis 1 - which is scheduled for late 2021.

Still awaiting a date on the final SLS rocket's Hot Fire test.

NASA should be announcing the date in the next couple of days...

EDIT:
Green Run Update: NASA Targets March 18 for SLS Hot Fire Test
https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2021...-nasa-targets-march-18-for-sls-hot-fire-test/

 

[Cannuck]

Here's one for you: Warp Speed

Open another tab and play both: White Noise