Month: October 2021

[The state of Western science is insane. These distances are beyond imagination and all this equipment and these methods were invented by Whites. Just read this article and try to grasp the insane distances that are involved. The accuracy of our science is beyond imagination. Truly. Jan]

Astronomers have found hints of what could be the first planet ever to be discovered outside our galaxy.

Nearly 5,000 "exoplanets" – worlds orbiting stars beyond our Sun – have been found so far, but all of these have been located within the Milky Way galaxy.

The possible Saturn-sized planet discovered by Nasa’s Chandra X-Ray Telescope is in the Messier 51 galaxy.

This is located some 28 million light-years away from the Milky Way.

This new result is based on transits, where the passage of a planet in front of a star blocks some of the star’s light and yields a characteristic dip in brightness that can be detected by telescopes.

This general technique has already been used to find thousands of exoplanets.

Dr Rosanne Di Stefano and colleagues searched for dips in the brightness of X-rays received from a type of object known as an X-ray bright binary.

These objects typically contain a neutron star or black hole pulling in gas from a closely orbiting companion star. The material near the neutron star or black hole becomes superheated and glows at X-ray wavelengths.

Because the region producing bright X-rays is small, a planet passing in front of it could block most or all of the rays, making the transit easier to spot.

The team members used this technique to detect the exoplanet candidate in a binary system called M51-ULS-1.

"The method we developed and employed is the only presently implementable method to discover planetary systems in other galaxies," Dr Di Stefano, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, US, told BBC News.

"It is a unique method, uniquely well-suited to finding planets around X-ray binaries at any distance from which we can measure a light curve."

The Chandra telescope was launched in 1999 to study X-ray emission from hot regions of the Universe

Future planet-hunting

This binary contains a black hole or neutron star orbiting a companion star with a mass about 20 times that of the Sun. A neutron star is the collapsed core of what had once been a massive star.

The transit lasted about three hours, during which the X-ray emission decreased to zero. Based on this and other information, the astronomers estimate that the candidate planet would be around the size of Saturn, and orbit the neutron star or black hole at about twice the distance Saturn lies from the Sun.

Dr Di Stefano said the techniques that have been so successful for finding exoplanets in the Milky Way break down when observing other galaxies. This is partly because the great distances involved reduce the amount of light which reaches the telescope and also mean that many objects are crowded into a small space (as viewed from Earth), making it difficult to resolve individual stars.

With X-rays, she said, "there may be only several dozen sources spread out over the entire galaxy, so we can resolve them. In addition, a subset of these are so bright in X-rays that we can measure their light curves.

"Finally, the huge emission of X-rays comes from a small region that can be substantially or (as in our case) totally blocked by a passing planet."

Messier 51 is also called the Whirlpool Galaxy because of its distinctive spiral shape

The researchers freely admit that more data is needed to verify their interpretation.

One challenge is that the planet candidate’s large orbit means it would not cross in front of its binary partner again for about 70 years, quashing any attempts to make a follow-up observation in the near-term.

One other possible explanation that the astronomers considered is that the dimming has been caused by a cloud of gas and dust passing in front of the X-ray source.

However, they think this is unlikely, because the characteristics of the event do not match up with the properties of a gas cloud.

"We know we are making an exciting and bold claim so we expect that other astronomers will look at it very carefully," said co-author Julia Berndtsson of Princeton University, New Jersey.

"We think we have a strong argument, and this process is how science works."

Dr Di Stefano said that the new generation of optical and infrared telescopes would not be able to compensate for the problems of crowding and dimness, so observations at X-ray wavelengths would likely remain the primary method for detecting planets in other galaxies.

However, she said a method known as microlensing might also hold promise for identifying extra-galactic planets.

The study has been published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Astronomy.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59044650?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=7a8f0a1880-briefing-dy-20211026&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-7a8f0a1880-46019854

[I have been following the topic of exo-planets – planets outside the solar system for some years now. The rate of discovery is picking up faster and faster. I suspect that when new specialised satellites get going, you'll see the pace of discoveries picking up EXPONENTIALLY FASTER. I suspect within a decade or two they'll be finding planets at insane speeds and the discoveries will run into the millions and later the billions – just like with stars. It's going to be incredible. Western science totally smokes. Jan]

The number of planets detected around other stars – or exoplanets – is set to hit the 4,000 mark.

The huge haul is a sign of the explosion of findings from searches with telescopes on the ground and in space over the last 25 years.

It’s also an indication of just how common planets are – with most stars in the Milky Way hosting at least one world in orbit around them.

That’s something astronomers couldn’t be certain of just 30 years ago.

The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, run by the Observatoire de Paris, has already passed the 4,000 mark.

Dr Françoise Roques, from the observatory, who is on the scientific board of the encyclopedia, told BBC News: "The great news is that we shift from a starry sky to a planetary sky, as there are more planets than stars.

"And also that the planetary systems have great diversity of structure, with planets orbiting zero, one, two… stars, or other planets."

The Nasa Exoplanet Archive is 74 planets away from the milestone. But there are 443 planet candidates detected by Nasa’s Tess space telescope (launched in 2018) awaiting confirmation.

There are a further 2,423 candidates detected by the Kepler space telescope.

The latest exoplanet to be added to the Nasa archive was the Super Earth GI 686 b, which orbits a red dwarf star (a type cooler than our Sun) which was discovered using ground telescopes. It was added on 21 March.

The total number of confirmed planets differs between the two catalogues because of slightly different acceptance criteria – along with other factors.

The early technique of detecting new worlds by the "wobble" induced by a planet’s gravitational tug on its star yielded many giant planets known as "hot Jupiters", which orbited close to their stars. These planet types were easier to detect using the wobble method.

Nasa’s Kepler space telescope was launched in 2009; it used a different technique known as the transit method to measure the dip in brightness as a planet passed in front of its host star. Kepler discovered hundreds of Neptune-sized planets and those that fell into a category known as Super Earths (those having a mass larger than Earth’s but below those of Neptune-sized planets).

Dr Roques said it remained a difficult task to distinguish between a type of star known as a brown dwarf and giant planets.

"Four-thousand is just a number as the frontier of the planet domain is uncertain," she said.

"The brown dwarfs have been defined by the [IAU – International Astronomical
Union] as small stars, but in fact, some of them are big planets. Our database collects objects until 60 Jupiter masses and contains a mix of the planetary brown dwarfs (formed in a protoplanetary disk around a star) and starry brown dwarfs (formed by collapse of interstellar cloud).

"The only way to ensure the difference is to access its internal structure, which is a difficult/ impossible task."

The first exoplanets were found around a pulsar – a highly magnetised neutron star – in 1992 by Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail.

The initial discovery of a planet around a main sequence star – those that fuse hydrogen into helium within their cores – was made in 1995 by astronomers Didier Queloz and Michel Mayor.

Dr Roque explained: "For the field of exoplanet exploration, we [are
going] from discovery projects to exploration projects, for a better understanding of the structure, formation, atmosphere and, of course habitability of exoplanets."

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47681239

[This is quaint. We have pieces of rock that come into orbit and later leave. Jan]

Until recently, many of us earthlings were blissfully unaware that our planet had gained a second moon. But now 2020 CD3 has become such a superstar, we’re using giant telescopes just to catch a glimpse of it.

Part-time paparazzi, full-time astronomers at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii snapped the stunning pictures of the car-sized carbonaceous rock using the 8-meter Gemini North telescope.

The image is actually a combination of three separate images using three different filters to capture our new natural satellite in all its glory.

"Obtaining the images was a scramble for the Gemini team because the object is quickly becoming fainter as it moves away from Earth," explains Gemini Observatory astronomer John Blakeslee, adding that the new celestial superstar 2020 CD3 is expected to leave us forever some time in April.

Fear not, as there are already rumors circulating of a new generation of mini-moons that could already be orbiting the Earth.

"We expect to find a population of these objects once the Rubin Observatory is operational," said Grigori Fedorets, the lead astronomer for the Gemini observations, referencing the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, whose sole purpose will be to scan the skies for similar, previously unknown, objects.

Source: https://www.rt.com/news/481914-astronomers-first-color-photo-minimoon/

[This is astounding. This normally is not possible. This is moving things to a whole new level as bits and pieces of older and older DNA is found … something previously impossible! So much can be learned from this. Jan]

The remnants of DNA may lurk in 125 million-year-old dinosaur fossils found in China. If the microscopic structures are indeed DNA, they would be the oldest recorded preservation of chromosome material in a vertebrate fossil.

DNA is coiled inside chromosomes within a cell’s nucleus. Researchers have reported possible cell nucleus structures in fossils of plants and algae dating back millions of years. Scientists have even suggested that a set of microfossils from 540 million years ago might hold preserved nuclei.

These claims are often controversial, because it can be hard to distinguish a fossilized nucleus from a random blob of mineralization created during the fossilization process. In the new study, published Sept. 24 in the journal Communications Biology, researchers compared fossilized cartilage from the feathered, peacock-size dinosaur Caudipteryx with cells from modern chickens; they found structures in the fossils that looked much like chromatin, or threads of DNA and protein.

"The fact that they are seeing this is really interesting, and it suggests we need to do more research as to what happens to DNA and chromosomes after cell death," said Emily Carlisle, a doctoral student who studies microscopic fossils and their preservation at the University of Bristol in England but was not involved in the new research.

To answer the obvious burning question: No, we’re nowhere close to resurrecting dinosaurs from their fossilized DNA.

"If there is any DNA or DNA-like molecule in there, it will be — as a scientific guess — very, very chemically modified and altered," Alida Bailleul, a paleobiologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who led the new research, wrote in an email to Live Science.

However, Bailleul said, if paleontologists can identify chromosome material in fossils, they may someday be able to unravel snippets of a genetic sequence. This could reveal a little more about dinosaur physiology.

But first, researchers have to find out if the DNA is even there. Until recently, most paleontologists thought that rot and decay destroyed the contents of cells before fossilization could take hold. Any microscopic structures inside cells were considered collapsed cell contents, such as organelles and membranes, that had rotted before mineralization, Carlisle told Live Science. More recently, though, paleontologists have found legitimate cell structures in a few fossils. For example, 190 million-year-old fern cells described in 2014 in the journal Science were buried in volcanic ash and fossilized so quickly that some were frozen in the process of cell division. Unmistakable chromosomes are visible in some of these cells.

In 2020, Bailleul and her colleagues reported the possible preservation of DNA in the skull of an infant Hypacrosaurus, a kind of duck-billed dinosaur that lived 75 million years ago, found in Montana. The possible DNA was found in cartilage, the connective tissue that makes up the joints.

For the new study, the researchers turned to a well-preserved specimen of Caudipteryx held by the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature in China. Originally discovered in the northeastern province of Liaoning, the fossil has ample preserved cartilage, which the researchers stained with the same dyes used to image DNA in modern tissue. These dyes bind to DNA and turn it a specific color, depending on the dye, allowing the DNA to stand out against the rest of the nucleus. By examining the stained, fossilized cartilage with several microscopy methods, Bailleul and her team showed that the cartilage cells contain structures that look just like nuclei with a scramble of chromatin inside.

The stained dinosaur nuclei’s resemblance to modern cells doesn’t prove there is DNA inside them, though, Bailleul cautioned. "What it means is that there are definitely parts of original organic molecules, perhaps some original DNA in there, but we don’t know that yet for sure," she said. "We just need to go figure out exactly what these organic molecules are."

The imaging definitely seems to show nuclei, Carlisle said, but it’s harder to identify fossilized chromosomes, because no one really knows what happens to chromosomes as they decay. It’s possible that the contents of the nucleus might just collapse into structures that look like chromosomes but are really just a jumble of meaningless mineralized junk; it’s also possible that the fossilization process preserves some of the original molecular structure. (One 2012 study suggests that DNA in bone will completely break down in about 7 million years, but the timing may depend heavily on environmental factors.)

"It would be really interesting to do more experiments into that, looking at what happens inside the nuclei instead of just what happens to it from the surface," Carlisle said.

Bailleul and her colleagues hope to collect more chemical data to nail down the identity of the mysterious structures.

"I hope we can reconstruct a sequence, someday, somehow," she said. "Let’s see: I could be wrong, but I could also be right."

Source: https://www.livescience.com/dinosaur-dna-fossils.html?utm_source=SmartBrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=368B3745-DDE0-4A69-A2E8-62503D85375D&utm_content=FDA2F203-A8D8-4A6F-8372-A21AA22D887C&utm_term=23709803-d360-4259-9c73-be4ff46b5c71