Some interesting and weird science. The universe is really strange and scientists find some head scratching things. How can a star be older than the universe itself?
Interestingly, this star is not all that far away, but it moves at a speed of 1.3 million km/hr. It is clear that objects are "thrown around" the universe by all sorts of gravitational interactions. There are stars and even planets, speeding alone through galaxies and between galaxies!
[This is a fascinating little video and it details a type of Rhino that was much larger than any elephant. Nature and evolution of animals is fascinating, but of course, all this applies to humans as well. Jan]
Snails transmit a disease that kill a lot of people:
Figuring out what this creature’s face actually looked like would take paleontologists years. But understanding this weird animal can help us shine a light on at least one way for ecosystems to bounce back from even the worst mass extinction.
You can view the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8W26SiCylI
Some information on why you age.
Interesting stuff. I have noticed life "speeding up" as I get older.
At a passing glance, this submarine looks like any other.
It stretches a few feet longer and can putz around the ocean a bit farther, but its bulbous torpedo-shaped design is familiar to the first robotic subs that’ve plied the waters for decades. But a closer look at Dive Technologies’ new sub reveals a quiet revolution—from how it works to how it’s made.
This unassuming sub is a new breed of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, or AUVs, future subs that are bigger, smarter, and can travel farther than ever before. They are changing the rules for underwater military, commercial, and scientific operations, and instead of building these water-delving behemoths in a traditional shipyard, ship makers are 3D printing them.
“Large AUVs will change everything,” says Sam Russo, COO of Dive Technologies. “They bring an enormous payload capability and energy capacity that allows the vehicles to operate on their own in the ocean for days on end.”
But Dive isn’t using your run-of-the-mill MakerBot. Using large scale 3D printers, the Boston-based startup can slash costs, speed up production, and create any submarine imaginable in just a few weeks—from idea to fully-functioning prototype.
Source: Popular Mechanics
WASHINGTON, (Sputnik) – President Donald Trump instructed future US governments to develop nuclear power options to support human settlements on the Moon and Mars and provide propulsion for spacecraft and rovers to explore other planets, according to a new Space Policy Directive released by the White House on Wednesday.
"This memorandum establishes a national strategy to ensure the development and use of SNPP [space nuclear power and propulsion] systems when appropriate to enable and achieve the scientific, exploration, national security, and commercial objectives of the United States," the document, dubbed Space Policy Directive-6, said.
The directive sets a number of goals, including establishing a uranium-based nuclear power plant on the surface of the moon by 2027, and using nuke technology to explore Mars.
The directive also sets a 2030 goal to develop new technology to improve systems that generate electricity using radioactive isotopes. Such systems offer long-term power sources for robotic exploration of planet surfaces and robotic spacecraft to transit the solar system.
The Trump administration set a goal of returning US astronauts to the moon by 2024, building a permanent lunar colony, and sending humans to Mars.
While the directive focuses on developing nuclear power technology for space exploration, it also reflects an effort to maintain current US space exploration plans after Trump leaves office in January, 2021.
The celebrated Arecibo Observatory telescope in Puerto Rico, which once starred in a James Bond film, collapsed Tuesday when its 900-ton receiver platform plunged 450 feet (140 meters) onto the radio dish below.
Engineers had recently warned of the huge structure’s decrepit condition, and the US National Science Foundation (NSF) announced only last month that it would be dismantled.
Two of the cables that held the platform over the radio dish – which measures 1,000 feet (300 meters) in diameter – had snapped this year, and the structure finally gave way on Tuesday morning.
Photographs showed clouds of dust rising into the air and the remains of the telescope instruments scattered across the site.
Aerial view of damage at the Arecibo Observatory on 1 Dec 2020. (Ricardo Arduengo/AFP)
"We can confirm the platform fell and that we have reports of no injuries," Rob Margetta, spokesman for the NSF, told AFP.
The telescope was one of the largest in the world and has been a tool for many astronomical discoveries since the 1960s, as well as being famous for its dramatic scale and setting.
An action scene from the Bond film GoldenEye featuring Pierce Brosnan took place high above the dish, and in Contact, an astronomer played by Jodie Foster used the observatory in her quest for alien signals.
Abel Mendez, director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, said the platform fell sometime before 8:00 am (1200 GMT), describing it as "a total disaster".
"Many students are trained in astronomy in the observatory, they are inspired like me to do a career in science and astronomy," he said.
"The loss of the Arecibo telescope is a big loss for the world, but it is more of a loss for Puerto Rico. It is an icon for our island."
Damage sustained at the Arecibo Observatory 305-meter telescope. (UCF)
The telescope was in operation for 57 years until August, and scientists had lobbied the NSF to reverse its decision to close the site.
In August, an auxiliary cable failed after slipping from its socket in one of the towers and left a 100-foot gash in the dish below.
Engineers were assessing the damage and how to repair it when a main cable connected to the same tower broke on November 6.
Before Tuesday, a controlled demolition had been planned to avoid an unexpected collapse.
Among the telescope’s successes was in 1992 discovering the first exoplanet – a planet outside the solar system – and in 1981 it helped produce the first radar maps of the surface of Venus.
The observatory’s website said the telescope was "a world-leading radio astronomy, solar system radar and atmospheric physics facility, contributing highly relevant data to support discovery, innovation and the advancement of science."
"What a sad day for astronomy and planetary science worldwide and one of the most iconic telescopes of all time," tweeted Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator at the NASA science mission directorate.
The site had hoped the dismantling plan would preserve other parts of the observatory for future research and education.
"As we move forward, we will be looking for ways to assist the scientific community and maintain our strong relationship with the people of Puerto Rico," the NSF said in a tweet.
Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/the-arecibo-telescope-platform-has-collapsed
[I have no opinion on this. It's just interesting science. What if any implications this might have, I don't know. Jan]
The question of whether a 7-million-year-old primate, nicknamed ‘Toumai,’ walked on two or four legs has whipped up drama amongst palaeontologists – complete with a vanishing femur.
Since the discovery of Sahelanthropus tchadensis’s first fossil back in 2001, it has often been cited as our earliest known hominin ancestor. Initial analysis suggested that Sahelanthropus regularly walked upright and had a combination of ape-like and human-like features.
These conclusions, however, were based on a single skull.
The skull has anatomical features that potentially indicate this primate had an erect spine, and therefore spent some of its time walking on two legs only. Its small teeth also appear more human than ape-like. A later reconstruction supported these findings.
But other researchers have since argued that this alone is not enough evidence to class Sahelanthropus as a hominin biped – a primate directly ancestral to humans – rather than a related, but not directly ancestral hominid.
Around the same time and at the same location where the skull was found, in Toros-Menalla in Chad, a partial left femur was also recovered. The femur vanished after another researcher started to examine it in 2004, having come across it supposedly by chance.
Aude Bergeret-Medina and her supervisor, palaeoanthropologist Roberto Macchiarelli from the University of Poitiers in France, eventually continued their analysis based on measurements and photos. They have just published their findings, which cast doubt on Sahelanthropus’s place in our family tree.
"Based on our analyses, the partial femur lacks any feature consistent with regular bouts of terrestrial bipedal travel," Macchiarelli and team write in their paper.
"Thus, if there is compelling evidence that S. tchadensis is a stem hominin, then bipedalism can no longer be seen as a requirement for inclusion in the hominin clade."
Another paper still awaiting peer review from one of the authors of the original Sahelanthropus studies disputes this, claiming the femur has a hard top ridge that supports an upright stance.
Meanwhile, another palaeontologist, Martin Pickford from the French National Museum of Natural History, wonders if the femur even belongs to Toumai, or at least another Sahelanthropus.
Still, others agree with Macchiarelli’s assessment of the femur.
"I saw the pictures 10 or 12 years ago, and it was clear to me that it’s more similar to a chimp than to any other hominin," University of Tübingen palaeontologist Madelaine Böhme, who was not involved in any of the studies, told New Scientist.
Analysis of molecular differences in our DNA suggests that humans parted ways with chimpanzees and bonobos (our closest still living relatives), around 6-8 million years ago. The only other fossil evidence of a possible hominin from that time is from Orrorin tugenensis.
Macchiarelli and team compared the femur with one from O. tugenensis and determined that there’s at least species-level difference between them.
After also comparing them with Australopithecus, gorillas, and modern humans, they believe these differences suggest the mode of locomotion of the two oldest species was also different.
They suspect Sahelanthropus may be an ancestral relative with no remaining living descendants – a primate lineage that went extinct.
They also point out others have suggested the small teeth found in the original study could just indicate the primate is female. But the team agrees that fascinating questions nonetheless remain, particularly around the lines that we use to define what exactly makes a primate a human, quoting a 2017 paper in their conclusion:
"Exactly where in Africa, and under what circumstances, the ape-human demarcation began, and when, how and why the ape-human boundary became irrevocably established, are important research challenges that are still unresolved."
We’ll need many more fossils before we know the answers.
This research was published in the Journal of Human Evolution.