The radioactive splitting of water molecules, a process studied more by nuclear chemists than by microbiologists, could yield enough energy to fuel a large portion of the deep subsurface biome.
Samantha Mash for Quanta Magazine
Author: jlamprecht
Video: Trump Breaking Video: We’re Going to Take Back the Senate, the House – the White House – SOONER THA N YOU THINK
[I hope so. I would like to see Trump as the President because that is validly his office – not this bum, communist, crap bag, Biden. Jan]
You can watch the video here: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/06/trump-breaking-video-going-take-back-senate-take-back-house-white-house-sooner-think/?utm_source=Email&utm_me
Science: Giant diamonds, buried miles below Earth’s surface, could explain Superdeep Earthquakes
A new study has suggested that the presence of diamonds deep beneath the Earth could explain why earthquakes occur at such depths, claiming that super-hot rocks release water that weakens surrounding rocks and triggers quakes.
The study follows earlier hypotheses on superdeep earthquakes and explores whether water stored hundreds of kilometers below the Earth’s surface may be responsible for the phenomena.
An earlier explanation, although partially discounted as scientists didn’t know why there would be water 300km below the Earth’s surface, suggested that fluid in the mantle may weaken rocks around it and cause earthquakes. Some earthquakes in the mantle transition zone are some of the strongest ever recorded.
A team of researchers including Steven Shirey, a geochemist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, took a closer look at why water might be down there. They considered how water might permeate tectonic plates, infiltrating the slabs in a number of ways. Among these was that water may be locked in the minerals that formed as molten rock, or that wet sediment accumulated as slabs moved across the ocean floor, or that ocean water infiltrated the slabs as they bent and fractured.
The researchers then found that, once some rocks in the slabs reached temperatures above 580°C, they were less able to hold water – in theory such temperatures would be reached the closer the slab moved towards the Earth’s core. As water leaves the rock, it would then disrupt other rocks around it, triggering earthquakes. According to Shirey and his team, the mineral-rich water released by rocks would fuel diamond formation.
The authors contend that further research is needed to fully understand the fluid-triggered mechanism for deep earthquakes. They add that their new theory is in many ways easy to integrate into existing dominant theories on superdeep activity.
10 mind-boggling things you should know about quantum physics
From the multiverse to black holes, here’s your cheat sheet to the spooky side of the universe.
- The quantum world is lumpy
You see? Exactly like a pair of shoes
The quantum world has a lot in common with shoes. You can’t just go to a shop and pick out sneakers that are an exact match for your feet. Instead, you’re forced to choose between pairs that come in predetermined sizes.
The subatomic world is similar. Albert Einstein won a Nobel Prize for proving that energy is quantized. Just as you can only buy shoes in multiples of half a size, so energy only comes in multiples of the same "quanta" — hence the name quantum physics.
The quanta here is the Planck constant, named after Max Planck, the godfather of quantum physics. He was trying to solve a problem with our understanding of hot objects like the sun. Our best theories couldn’t match the observations of the energy they kick out. By proposing that energy is quantized, he was able to bring theory neatly into line with experiment.
- Something can be both wave and particle
A solar sail: in space, light exerts pressure like the wind on Earth.
A solar sail: in space, light exerts pressure like the wind on Earth. (Image credit: getty)
J. J. Thomson won the Nobel Prize in 1906 for his discovery that electrons are particles. Yet his son George won the Nobel Prize in 1937 for showing that electrons are waves. Who was right? The answer is both of them. This so-called wave-particle duality is a cornerstone of quantum physics. It applies to light as well as electrons. Sometimes it pays to think about light as an electromagnetic wave, but at other times it’s more useful to picture it in the form of particles called photons.
A telescope can focus light waves from distant stars, and also acts as a giant light bucket for collecting photons. It also means that light can exert pressure as photons slam into an object. This is something we already use to propel spacecraft with solar sails, and it may be possible to exploit it in order to maneuver a dangerous asteroid off a collision course with Earth, according to Rusty Schweickart, chairman of the B612 Foundation.
- Objects can be in two places at once
Schrodinger’s cat – dead and alive
Erwin Schrödinger used the idea of a cat in a box to simplify superposition. (Image credit: Mopic / Alamy Stock Photo)
Wave-particle duality is an example of superposition. That is, a quantum object existing in multiple states at once. An electron, for example, is both ‘here’ and ‘there’ simultaneously. It’s only once we do an experiment to find out where it is that it settles down into one or the other.
This makes quantum physics all about probabilities. We can only say which state an object is most likely to be in once we look. These odds are encapsulated into a mathematical entity called the wave function. Making an observation is said to ‘collapse’ the wave function, destroying the superposition and forcing the object into just one of its many possible states.
This idea is behind the famous Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment. A cat in a sealed box has its fate linked to a quantum device. As the device exists in both states until a measurement is made, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead until we look.
- It may lead us towards a multiverse
Worlds within worlds within worlds within…
We could just be one bubble of many, each containing a different version of the universe. (Image credit: getty)
The idea that observation collapses the wave function and forces a quantum ‘choice’ is known as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. However, it’s not the only option on the table. Advocates of the ‘many worlds’ interpretation argue that there is no choice involved at all. Instead, at the moment the measurement is made, reality fractures into two copies of itself: one in which we experience outcome A, and another where we see outcome B unfold. It gets around the thorny issue of needing an observer to make stuff happen — does a dog count as an observer, or a robot?
Instead, as far as a quantum particle is concerned, there’s just one very weird reality consisting of many tangled-up layers. As we zoom out towards the larger scales that we experience day to day, those layers untangle into the worlds of the many worlds theory. Physicists call this process decoherence.
- It helps us characterize stars
The spectra of stars can tell us what elements they contain, giving clues to their age and other characteristics
The spectra of stars can tell us what elements they contain, giving clues to their age and other
Danish physicist Niels Bohr showed us that the orbits of electrons inside atoms are also quantized. They come in predetermined sizes called energy levels. When an electron drops from a higher energy level to a lower energy level, it spits out a photon with an energy equal to the size of the gap. Equally, an electron can absorb a particle of light and use its energy to leap up to a higher energy level.
Astronomers use this effect all the time. We know what stars are made of because when we break up their light into a rainbow-like spectrum, we see colors that are missing. Different chemical elements have different energy level spacings, so we can work out the constituents of the sun and other stars from the precise colors that are absent.
- Without it the sun wouldn’t shine
This is a picture of quantum tunneling and you’re just going to have to take our word for it
Quantum tunneling is the finite possibility that a particle can break through an energy barrier.
The sun makes its energy through a process called nuclear fusion. It involves two protons — the positively charged particles in an atom — sticking together. However, their identical charges make them repel each other, just like two north poles of a magnet. Physicists call this the Coulomb barrier, and it’s like a wall between the two protons.
Think of protons as particles and they just collide with the wall and move apart: No fusion, no sunlight. Yet think of them as waves, and it’s a different story. When the wave’s crest reaches the wall, the leading edge has already made it through. The wave’s height represents where the proton is most likely to be. So although it is unlikely to be where the leading edge is, it is there sometimes. It’s as if the proton has burrowed through the barrier, and fusion occurs. Physicists call this effect "quantum tunneling".
- It stops dead stars collapsing
It’s theorised that white dwarfs’ cores may crystallise as they age
It’s theorised that white dwarfs’ cores may crystallize as they age.
Eventually fusion in the sun will stop and our star will die. Gravity will win and the sun will collapse, but not indefinitely. The smaller it gets, the more material is crammed together. Eventually a rule of quantum physics called the Pauli exclusion principle comes into play. This says that it is forbidden for certain kinds of particles — such as electrons — to exist in the same quantum state. As gravity tries to do just that, it encounters a resistance that astronomers call degeneracy pressure. The collapse stops, and a new Earth-sized object called a white dwarf forms.
Degeneracy pressure can only put up so much resistance, however. If a white dwarf grows and approaches a mass equal to 1.4 suns, it triggers a wave of fusion that blasts it to bits. Astronomers call this explosion a Type Ia supernova, and it’s bright enough to outshine an entire galaxy.
- It causes black holes to evaporate
Not everything that falls into a black hole disappears – some matter escapes
Not everything that falls into a black hole disappears – some matter escapes.
A quantum rule called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle says that it’s impossible to perfectly know two properties of a system simultaneously. The more accurately you know one, the less precisely you know the other. This applies to momentum and position, and separately to energy and time.
It’s a bit like taking out a loan. You can borrow a lot of money for a short amount of time, or a little cash for longer. This leads us to virtual particles. If enough energy is ‘borrowed’ from nature then a pair of particles can fleetingly pop into existence, before rapidly disappearing so as not to default on the loan.
Stephen Hawking imagined this process occurring at the boundary of a black hole, where one particle escapes (as Hawking radiation), but the other is swallowed. Over time the black hole slowly evaporates, as it’s not paying back the full amount it has borrowed.
- It explains the universe’s large-scale structure
Starting out as a singularity, the universe has been expanding for 13.8 billion years. (Image credit: getty)
Our best theory of the universe’s origin is the Big Bang. Yet it was modified in the 1980s to include another theory called inflation. In the first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, the cosmos ballooned from smaller than an atom to about the size of a grapefruit. That’s a whopping 10^78 times bigger. Inflating a red blood cell by the same amount would make it larger than the entire observable universe today.
As it was initially smaller than an atom, the infant universe would have been dominated by quantum fluctuations linked to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Inflation caused the universe to grow rapidly before these fluctuations had a chance to fade away. This concentrated energy into some areas rather than others — something astronomers believe acted as seeds around which material could gather to form the clusters of galaxies we observe now.
- It is more than a little ‘spooky’
The properties of a particle can be ‘teleported’ through quantum entanglement.
As well as helping to prove that light is quantum, Einstein argued in favor of another effect that he dubbed ‘spooky action at distance’. Today we know that this ‘quantum entanglement’ is real, but we still don’t fully understand what’s going on. Let’s say that we bring two particles together in such a way that their quantum states are inexorably bound, or entangled. One is in state A, and the other in state B.
The Pauli exclusion principle says that they can’t both be in the same state. If we change one, the other instantly changes to compensate. This happens even if we separate the two particles from each other on opposite sides of the universe. It’s as if information about the change we’ve made has traveled between them faster than the speed of light, something Einstein said was impossible.
Video: The Universe’s Largest Planets
This is not such a fantastic video, but even so there is some interesting stuff in here.
Video: The Insane Size of the Largest Planetary Systems
You can watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDHouMEXHQg
Video: Space Science: Mars helicopter Ingenuity experiences anomaly on 6th flight, but lands safely
[Very cool stuff. The helicopter seems to fly itself and make its own corrections itself because it's White controllers are sitting so far away. Jan]
You can watch the video here: https://www.space.com/mars-helicopter-ingenuity-sixth-flight-anomaly
The incident, while stressful, showcased the little chopper’s toughness.
NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity encountered some trouble on its latest Red Planet flight, but the little chopper soldiered through.
Ingenuity lifted off May 22 on its sixth sortie overall and the first flight of its extended mission on Mars, which aims to showcase the scouting potential of Red Planet rotorcraft.
The flight plan called for the 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) copter to attain an altitude of 33 feet (10 meters), cruise 492 feet (150 m) to the southwest, then move 49 feet (15 m) to the south while snapping photos toward the west, and then zip 164 feet (50 m) to the northeast before touching down.
Video: See the view on Mars from Ingenuity helicopter’s fourth flight
This image was taken from the height of 33 feet (10 meters) by NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter during its sixth flight on May 22, 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Things went well at first. But 54 seconds into the flight, Ingenuity suffered a glitch that interrupted the flow of images from its navigation camera to its onboard computer, Ingenuity chief pilot Håvard Grip, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, wrote in an update on Thursday (May 27).
"This glitch caused a single image to be lost, but more importantly, it resulted in all later navigation images being delivered with inaccurate timestamps," Grip wrote.
"From this point on, each time the navigation algorithm performed a correction based on a navigation image, it was operating on the basis of incorrect information about when the image was taken," he explained. "The resulting inconsistencies significantly degraded the information used to fly the helicopter, leading to estimates being constantly ‘corrected’ to account for phantom errors. Large oscillations ensued."
Ingenuity pitched and rolled more than 20 degrees at some points during the flight, Grip wrote, and experienced spikes in power consumption. But the helicopter managed to power through the anomaly, eventually landing safely within about 16 feet (5 m) of its intended touchdown spot.
"In a very real sense, Ingenuity muscled through the situation, and while the flight uncovered a timing vulnerability that will now have to be addressed, it also confirmed the robustness of the system in multiple ways," Grip wrote.
"While we did not intentionally plan such a stressful flight, NASA now has flight data probing the outer reaches of the helicopter’s performance envelope," he added. "That data will be carefully analyzed in the time ahead, expanding our reservoir of knowledge about flying helicopters on Mars."
Click here for more Space.com videos…
Ingenuity on new Martian airfield – See flight, landing site pics & mission control
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Ingenuity landed on Mars with NASA’s Perseverance rover on Feb. 18. They touched down inside Mars’ Jezero Crater, which harbored a lake and a river delta in the ancient past. On April 3, the helicopter deployed from the rover’s belly, kicking off a month-long, five-flight campaign designed to demonstrate that powered aerial flight is possible on the Red Planet.
That historic campaign went very smoothly, and Ingenuity remained in good health at its conclusion. So NASA approved a mission extension, during which the chopper will perform more directed scouting work.
Perseverance documented Ingenuity’s first five flights but did not do so for the May 22 sortie. The rover is now starting to focus on its own science mission, which involves hunting for signs of long-gone Mars life and collecting samples for future return to Earth.
Source: https://www.space.com/mars-helicopter-ingenuity-sixth-flight-anomaly
Pics: Russia plans to launch a nuclear-powered spacecraft that can travel from the moon to Jupiter
- Russia is building a nuclear-powered spacecraft that can transport heavy cargo in deep space.
- The spacecraft is scheduled to launch on a mission to Jupiter in 2030.
- Russia eventually hopes to build a nuclear-powered space station using similar technology.
Russia is planning to send a nuclear-powered spacecraft to the moon, then Venus, then Jupiter.
Roscosmos, Russia’s federal space agency, announced Saturday that its "space tug" – the term for a spacecraft that transports astronauts or equipment from one orbit to another – is scheduled to launch on an interplanetary mission in 2030.
The spacecraft’s energy module, named "Zeus," is designed to generate enough power to propel heavy cargo through deep space. It’s essentially a mobile nuclear-power plant.
Several countries have their eyes on similar technology as a way to shorten trips in space. Right now, spacecraft rely on solar power or gravity to accelerate. But that means it could take more than three years for astronauts to conduct a round-trip visit to Mars. NASA estimates that a nuclear-powered spacecraft could shave a year off that timeline.
The US hopes to put a nuclear-power plant – a 10-kilowatt reactor integrated with a lunar lander – on the moon as early as 2027. So far, however, NASA has only sent one nuclear reactor to space, on a satellite in 1965. Other spacecraft, like the Mars Curiosity and Perseverance rovers, are also nuclear-powered, but they don’t use a reactor.
Russia, meanwhile, has put more than 30 reactors in space. It’s "Zeus" module would advance those efforts by using a 500-kilowatt nuclear reactor to propel itself from one planet to the next, according to Russian state news agency Sputnik.
The mission plan calls for the spacecraft to approach the moon first, then head toward Venus, where it can use the planet’s gravity to shift directions toward its final destination, Jupiter. That would help conserve propellant.
The entire mission would last 50 months (a little over four years), according to Alexander Bloshenko, Roscosmos’ executive director for long-term programs and science. During a presentation in Moscow on Saturday, Bloshenko said Roscosmos and the Russian Academy of Sciences are still working to calculate the flight’s ballistics, or trajectory, as well as the amount of weight it can carry.
The mission may ultimately be a precursor to a new frontier of Russian spaceflight: Sputnik reported that Russia is designing a space station that uses the same nuclear-powered technology.
Nuclear energy has advantages over solar power in space
A concept of a NASA spacecraft that would use nuclear thermal propulsion.NASA
Most spacecraft get their energy from a few sources: the sun, batteries, or unstable atoms called radioisotopes.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft at Jupiter, for instance, uses solar panels to generate electricity. Solar power can also be used to charge batteries in a spacecraft, but the energy source becomes less potent as a spacecraft gets farther from the sun. In other cases, lithium batteries can help power shorter missions on their own. The Huygens probe, for instance, used batteries to briefly land on Saturn’s moon, Titan, in 2005.
NASA’s twin Voyager spacecraft use radioisotopes (sometimes called "nuclear batteries") to survive the harsh environments of the outer solar system and interstellar space, but that’s not the same as bringing a nuclear reactor on board.
Nuclear reactors offer several advantages: They can survive cold, dark regions of the solar system without requiring sunlight. They’re also reliable for long periods of time – the "Zeus" nuclear reactor is designed to last 10 to 12 years. Plus, they can propel spacecraft to other planets in less time.
But nuclear power has its challenges, too. Only certain types of fuel, like highly enriched uranium, can withstand a reactor’s extremely high temperatures – and they may not be the safe to use. In December, the US prohibited the use of highly enriched uranium to propel objects into space if a mission is possible with other nuclear fuel or non-nuclear power sources.
Russia is gearing up for a nuclear-powered space station
ISS crew member Sergey Kud-Sverchkov lands in a remote area in Kazakhstan on April 17, 2021.NASA/Bill Ingalls/Reuters
Russian engineers began developing the "Zeus" module in 2010 with the goal of sending it to orbit within two decades. They’re on track to meet that mark.
Engineers started manufacturing and testing a prototype in 2018, Sputnik reported. Roscosmos also signed a contract last year worth 4.2 billion rubles (R800 million) that put Arsenal, a design company based in St. Petersburg, in charge of a preliminary design.
The technology could aid Russia’s efforts to develop a new space station by 2025. The BBC reported last month that Russia plans to cut ties with the International Space Station – which it shares with the US, Japan, Europe, and Canada – that year.
Russia launched the ISS in partnership with the US in 1998. But Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov told the state TV channel Russia 1 last month that the ISS’s condition "leaves much to be desired." Indeed, the station has recently experienced air leaks and a breakdown of its oxygen-supply system.
NASA has cleared the ISS to fly until at least 2028, but the agency will likely de-orbit the station in the next 10 to 15 years.
Source: https://www.businessinsider.co.za/russia-nuclear-powered-spacecraft-moon-venus-jupiter-2021-5
Science: Exercise: How the way you move can change the way you think and feel
[I'm not subscribed to this site so I can't get the full article. Our sedentary lifestyle is very bad for us. And even I'm guilty of this. We need to move more. Jan]
New research suggests the connection between exercise and the brain goes deeper than you might think. These six kinds of movement can help make you more creative, boost your self-esteem and reach altered states of consciousness
FILTER-FEEDERS aside, humans are the only creatures that can get away with sitting around all day. As a species, we have been remarkably successful at devising ways to feed, entertain ourselves and even find mates, all while barely lifting a finger.
True, this is a sign of just how clever and adaptable we are. But there is a huge cost to our sedentary ways, not only to our bodies, but also our minds. Falling IQs and the rise in mental health conditions have both been linked to our lack of physical movement.
But the connection between movement and the brain goes deeper than you might think. A revolutionary new understanding of the mind-body connection is revealing how our thoughts and emotions don’t just happen inside our heads, and that the way we move has a profound influence on how our minds operate. This opens up the possibility of using our bodies as tools to change the way we think and feel.
Evidence is starting to stack up that this is indeed the case, and it isn’t all about doing more exercise. In my new book, Move! The new science of body over mind, I explore emerging research in evolutionary biology, physiology, neuroscience and cell biology to find out which body movements affect the mind and why.
Whatever it is that you want from your mind – more creativity, improved resilience or higher self-esteem – the evidence shows that there is a way of moving the body that can help. Here is my pick of the best ways to use your body to achieve a healthier, better-functioning mind.
Faraway NASA probe detects the eerie hum of interstellar space
The classic 1979 sci-fi horror film "Alien" was advertised with the memorable tagline, "In space no can hear you scream." It did not say anything about humming.
Instruments aboard NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, which nine years ago exited our solar system’s outer reaches, have detected a faint monotonous hum caused by the constant vibrations of the small amounts of gas found in the near-emptiness of interstellar space, scientists said.
It essentially represents the background noise present in the vast expanse between star systems. These vibrations, called persistent plasma waves, were identified at radio frequencies in a narrow bandwidth during a three-year period as Voyager 1 traverses interstellar space.
"The persistent plasma waves that we’ve just discovered are far too weak to actually hear with the human ear. If we could hear it, it would sound like a single steady note, playing constantly but changing very slightly over time," said Stella Koch Ocker, a Cornell University doctoral student in astronomy and lead author of the study published this week in the journal Nature Astronomy.
The Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched in September 1977, is currently located about 14.1 billion miles (22.7 billion km) from Earth – roughly 152 times the distance between our planet and the sun – and is still obtaining and transmitting data.
Having decades ago visited the huge planets Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 is now providing insight into interstellar space.
The immense regions between star systems in a galaxy are not a complete vacuum. The stew of matter and radiation present in low densities – mostly gas – is called the interstellar medium. About 15% of the visible matter in our Milky Way galaxy is composed of this interstellar gas, dust and energetic particles like cosmic rays.
Much of the interstellar medium is in what is called an ionized, or electrically charged, state called plasma.
"Interstellar plasma is extremely diffuse compared to what we’re used to on Earth. In this plasma, there are about 0.1 atoms for every cubic centimeter, whereas the air we breathe on Earth has billions of atoms for every cubic centimeter," Ocker said.
Voyager 1 previously detected disturbances in the gas in interstellar space triggered by occasional flares from our sun. The new study instead reveals the steady vibrations unrelated to solar activity that could be a constant feature in interstellar space. This hum has a frequency of about 3 kilohertz (kHz).
"When the plasma oscillations are converted to an audio signal, it sounds like a tone that varies. It’s a bit eerie," said Cornell University astronomy professor and study co-author James Cordes.
After 44 years of travel, Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object in space.
"Voyager 1 will keep going but its power supply will run out most likely this decade after up to 50 years of service," Cordes said. "There are conceptual designs being made for future probes whose intended purpose is to reach further than the Voyager spacecraft. That is the message I find appealing: our reach is expanding into interstellar space."
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