For years, Lockheed Martin Corp. has been developing a successor to one of the fastest aircraft the world has seen, the SR-71 Blackbird, the Cold War reconnaissance craft that the U.S. Air Force retired almost three decades ago. Lockheed officials have said the hypersonic SR-72—dubbed the “Son of Blackbird” by one trade journal—could fly by 2030.

But a rather curious talk last week at an aerospace conference by a Lockheed Skunk Works executive implied that the SR-72 might already exist. Referring to detailed specifics of company design and manufacturing, Jack O’Banion, a Lockheed vice president, said a “digital transformation” arising from recent computing capabilities and design tools had made hypersonic development possible. Then—assuming O’Banion chose his verb tense purposely—came the surprise.

“Without the digital transformation, the aircraft you see there could not have been made,” O’Banion said, standing by an artist’s rendering of the hypersonic aircraft. “In fact, five years ago, it could not have been made.”

Hypersonic applies to speeds above Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. The SR-71 cruised at Mach 3.2, more than 2,000 mph, around 85,000 feet.

Computer processing power and new tools allow for three-dimensional design of a scramjet engine, O’Banion said at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ annual SciTech Forum near Orlando. (Scramjet refers to engine combustion occurring at supersonic speeds, which adds to the engineering complexity.) Adding a little Hollywood to an engineering presentation, O’Banion likened the digital advances in 3D design to the build process Tony Stark employs in the film “Iron Man.”

“We couldn’t have made the engine itself—it would have melted down into slag if we had tried to produce it five years ago,” O’Banion said. “But now we can digitally print that engine with an incredibly sophisticated cooling system integral into the material of the engine itself and have that engine survive for multiple firings for routine operation.” The aircraft is also agile at hypersonic speeds, with reliable engine starts, he said. A half-decade before, he added, developers “could not have even built it even if we conceived of it.”

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Steve Trimble@TheDEWLine

Jack O’Bannion, VP of Strategy at Skunk Works, is speaking today at SciTech conference. He showed a slide of the SR-72 and said: “Without digital transformation that aircraft you see there could not have been made.” Soooo … does that mean that aircraft was made?

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Of course, none of the Skunk Works executive’s talk confirmed that Lockheed Martin is preparing to turn over to the Pentagon a top-secret hypersonic aircraft, nor does it reveal how far the project may have progressed. It’s also unclear if such an aircraft would carry pilots or operate as a drone. (Skunk Works is the name of Lockheed’s 75-year-old advanced development programs division, based in California.)

Lockheed declined to address O’Banion’s comments. The defense contractor “continues to advance and test technologies, which will benefit hypersonic flight,” spokeswoman Melissa Dalton said in an email. “A Reusable Hypersonic System (RHS) is a far term solution that will be made possible by the path-finding work we are doing today.”

An Air Force spokesman, meanwhile, said only that that the military has no information on the project “at this time.”

Talk about Lockheed’s hypersonic program isn’t new. In fact, executives discussed the program’s status to such an extent last June that defense reporter Tyler Rogoway called it “highly peculiar.” (His article carried the headline “What’s the Deal with Lockheed’s Gabbing About the Secretive Hypersonic SR-72?”)

“There’s probably a big distance between prototype development and actual operational capability,” said Richard Aboulafia, a defense analyst with Teal Group. And the military has a history of publicly revealing new advanced aircraft many years after their prototypes were delivered.

Nevertheless, the SR-72 work could be an entirely digital exercise to date, funded by ample “black budget” appropriations stretching into the billions of dollars over time, Aboulafia said. It’s also possible that any hypersonic capability may well be incorporated into a type of long-range missile before an actual aircraft.

The basic physics of hypersonic flight have been understood for decades, with the Air Force and NASA flying the rocket-powered X-15 in the 1960s above Mach 6 and the X-43A hitting Mach 9.6 in 2004. More recently, Boeing Co. flew an experimental craft, the X-51 WaveRider, to Mach 5.1 in May 2013.

Still, there are myriad design challenges involved with hypersonic projects, Aboulafia said, likening scramjet engineering hurdles to “the proverbial lighting of a match in the hurricane.” This is one reason no hypersonic aircraft are in military service today—although U.S. officials have expressed concern about Chinese and Russian ambitions employing the technology.

For the Pentagon, such speeds would represent a new form of strategic deterrence in the sense that a hypersonic bomber could penetrate an enemy’s airspace, fire and depart before that nation had time to react. However, Aboulafia noted, such a capability could also be considered a destabilizing development if a U.S. adversary decided to react preemptively to such an aircraft’s existence.

The specific need is also unclear, given advances in satellite surveillance capabilities and the planned B-21 Raider, a precision bomber from Northrop Grumman Corp. expected to replace the Air Force’s aged fleet of B-1 Lancers and B-52s. The B-21 could cost as much as $97 billion for production and maintenance of at least 100 planes, with the first expected in the mid-2020s.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-16/america-s-fastest-spy-plane-may-be-back-and-hypersonic

Sitting about 6 light-years away from our sun, the red dwarf named Barnard’s star is the nearest solitary star to our solar system and the fastest-moving star in our night sky. It’s also really wobbly.

Chalk up the wobbles to old age if you like: The star may have been born some 10 billion years ago — making it more than twice the age of our sun— and it has only 16 percent of the sun’s mass. But astronomers prefer a different explanation. A new paper published today (Nov. 14) in the journal Nature combines 20 years of research to conclude “with 99 percent confidence” that Barnard’s star is being tugged about its orbit by a nearby exoplanet — a world that’s roughly three times the size of Earth and loaded with ice.

Astronomers caught wind of this possible super-Earth (that is, an exoplanet that has a mass greater than Earth’s but less than the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune) nearly 20 years ago while taking velocity measurements of Barnard’s star. The scientists saw that, every 230 days or so, Barnard’s star seemed to wobble its way closer to our solar system before slowly retreating again. The presence of a large planet, which could exert its own gravitational influence on Barnard’s star as it orbits around its host, was a possible explanation. Still, more data was needed to say for certain. [9 Most Intriguing Earth-Like Planets]

Now, following 20 years of observations from telescopes around the world, the data is there. In a new study, an international team of scientists looked at more than 700 velocity measurements of Barnard’s star and determined that the likeliest explanation for the star’s wobbly behavior is the influence of a nearby planet orbiting its local sun every 233 days.

“We used observations from seven different instruments, spanning 20 years, making this one of the largest and most extensive datasets ever used for precise radial velocity studies,” study author Ignasi Ribas, of Spain’s Institut de Ciències de l’Espai, said in a statement. “We are over 99 percent confident that the planet is there.”

This probable new planet — which the astronomers have dubbed Barnard’s star b — likely sits about as far away from its host star as Mercury does from our sun. That puts the planet near the small star’s “snow line,” or the celestial border beyond which any planetary water would be frozen. Scientists have previously suggested that the snow line is a prime place for planet formation, as frozen matter can easily glom onto other bits of gas and debris swirling around the nearby star.

Unfortunately, that also puts Barnard’s star b in a precarious position for hosting life. The planet is close enough to its host star that it likely does not have an atmosphere, and far enough from it that surface temperatures likely dip to about minus 240 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 150 degrees Celsius). That means any water is likely to be permanently frozen, the researchers wrote.

While this might prevent Barnard’s star b from being a candidate for extraterrestrial life, the nearby super-Earth is still a prime subject for honing scientists’ exoplanet discovery and monitoring techniques. Future telescope missions might be able to image the neighboring world directly.

According to study co-author Cristina Rodríguez-López, researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, this discovery represents “a boost to continue on searching for exoplanets around our closest stellar neighbors, in the hope that eventually we will come upon one that has the right conditions to host life.”

Source: https://www.livescience.com/64089-new-super-earth-discovered-at-closest-star.html

[In this instance a type of brain surgery, was practiced on a cow, which was practiced quite a lot on humans. The Ancient Greeks did it, the Romans did it as did other non-whites. Scientists don’t know how much of this was based on medicine or ritual. It seems to be mostly medical related. But in Russia they found people who did it as a ritual.

Scientists could see that many people survived this process because the bone began to heal around the hole. It is incredible to think whites were trying this type of brain surgery thousands of years ago. They actually could drill through the skull of a living person. Some died during the process, but there are many who lived, and when scientists first discovered this over a century ago, they were utterly astounded by it!]

Humans Probably Practiced Brain Surgery on This Cow 5,000 Years Ago

About 5,000 years ago, humans used crude stone tools to puncture a hole in a cow’s head, making it the earliest known instance of skull surgery in an animal.

It’s unclear whether the cow (Bos taurus) was alive or dead when the operation took place, but if it was alive, the animal didn’t survive for long, given that its skull shows no signs of healing, researchers said in a new study.

However, the intent of the surgery remains a mystery. If the operation — known as trepanation, a primitive type of brain surgery — was meant to save the cow, it would be the oldest known evidence of veterinary surgery on an animal, said the study’s lead researcher, Fernando Ramirez Rozzi, director of research specializing in human evolution at France’s National Center for Scientific Research in Toulouse. [25 Grisly Archaeological Discoveries]

It’s also possible that Neolithic humans were simply using the cow to practice trepanation, “in order to perfect the technique before applying it to humans,” Ramirez Rozzi and study co-researcher Alain Froment, a biological anthropologist at the Museum of Man, an anthropology museum in Paris, wrote in the study.

Researchers unearthed the ancient cow skull during an excavation lasting from 1975 to 1985 at the Neolithic site of Champ-Durand in Vende?e, a region on the Atlantic coast of western France. An analysis showed that the cow skull dated to sometime between 3400 B.C. and 3000 B.C., and that the animal was clearly an adult, the researchers found.

When past archaeologists first looked at the nearly complete cow cranium, they thought another cow must have caused the gouge. But the hole — which is 2.5 by 1.8 inches (6.4 by 4.6 centimeters) — was so peculiar that one of the original researchers asked Ramirez Rozzi and Froment to take a second look at it in 2012.

“At that time, we looked, and very quickly, we saw that it was trepanation in the cow skull; it was not a goring at all,” Ramirez Rozzi told Live Science.

If another animal had gored the cow, the violent blow would have caused fractures or splintering around the wound, the researchers said. And “no evidence of such a fracture, either internally or externally, can be seen,” the researchers wrote in the study. Nor does the hole look like it was caused by an infectious disease, such as syphilis or tuberculosis, Ramirez Rozzi and Froment noted.

While using a scanning electron microscope, the researchers saw cut marks around the hole in the cow’s head that looked eerily similar to scrape marks seen on the skulls of human trepanation patients, Ramirez Rozzi said.

The earliest evidence of trepanation in a human skull dates to the Mesolithic period, which lasted from about 8000 B.C. to 2700 B.C., the researchers said. Archaeologists have several ideas about why ancient people would scrape or drill a hole into a skull. Perhaps the technique was meant to solve a medical condition, such as epilepsy, or maybe it was part of a ritual, the researchers said.

In the cow’s case, it’s not clear why Neolithic people would have gone the extra mile to save a cow with some kind of medical disorder, Ramirez Rozzi said. It’s more likely that these ancient people were using the cow’s skull for trepanation practice, he said.

The study was published online today (April 19) in the journal Scientific Reports.

Source: https://www.livescience.com/62352-ancient-cow-brain-surgery-trepanation.html

Archaeologists have found what they believe to be the world’s oldest intact shipwreck at the bottom of the Black Sea where it appears to have lain undisturbed for more than 2,400 years.

The 23-metre (75ft) vessel, thought to be ancient Greek, was discovered with its mast, rudders and rowing benches all present and correct just over a mile below the surface. A lack of oxygen at that depth preserved it, the researchers said.

“A ship surviving intact from the classical world, lying in over 2km of water, is something I would never have believed possible,” said Professor Jon Adams, the principal investigator with the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project (MAP), the team that made the find. “This will change our understanding of shipbuilding and seafaring in the ancient world.”

The ship is believed to have been a trading vessel of a type that researchers say has only previously been seen “on the side of ancient Greek pottery such as the ‘Siren Vase’ in the British Museum”.

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That work, which dates from about the same period, depicts a similar vessel bearing Odysseus past the sirens, with the Homeric hero lashed to the mast to resist their songs.

The team reportedly said they intended to leave the vessel where it was found, but added that a small piece had been carbon dated by the University of Southampton and claimed the results “confirmed [it] as the oldest intact shipwreck known to mankind”. The team said the data would be published at the Black Sea MAP conference at the Wellcome Collection in London later this week.

It was among more than 60 shipwrecks found by the international team of maritime archaeologists, scientists and marine surveyors, which has been on a three-year mission to explore the depths of the Black Sea to gain a greater understanding of the impact of prehistoric sea-level changes.

They said the finds varied in age from a “17th-century Cossack raiding fleet, through Roman trading vessels, complete with amphorae, to a complete ship from the classical period”.

The documentary team made a two-hour film that is due to be shown at the British Museum on Tuesday.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/23/oldest-intact-shipwreck-thought-to-be-ancient-greek-discovered-at-bottom-of-black-sea

[This is incredible stuff! I’m keen to see what they learn from this! The 2 worms are from different places. The one worm is 41,700 years old and the other worm, found at a different location is 32,000 years old!]

Here’s the abstract from the science paper:-

Abstract

We have obtained the first data demonstrating the capability of multicellular organisms for longterm cryobiosis in permafrost deposits of the Arctic. The viable soil nematodes Panagrolaimus aff. detritophagus (Rhabditida) and Plectus aff. parvus (Plectida) were isolated from the samples of Pleistocene permafrost deposits of the Kolyma River Lowland. The duration of natural cryopreservation of the nematodes corresponds to the age of the deposits, 30 000–40 000 years.

Source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134%2FS0012496618030079

Here’s the full story:-

A pair of nematodes – roundworms – are apparently alive after they were frozen in permafrost for nearly 42,000 years.

Russian scientists said the two prehistoric worms, out of a group of about 300, are moving and eating after they came back to life in a lab at the Institute of Physico-Chemical and Biological Problems of Soil Science in Moscow, the Siberian Times reported.

One of the worms was found near the Alazeya River in 2015 and is believed to be about 41,700 years old, according to the study published in the Doklady Biological Sciences. They were found about 11.5 feet underground.

The other worm was found in 2002 in a fossil rodent burrow near the Kolyma River. These samples were taken from about 100 feet underground.

Scientists said worms frozen in permafrost in eastern Russia for nearly 42,000 years are alive and eating. (East2West)

The worms were found close to Pleistocene Park, the site of an experimental project to recreate the habitat of the extinct woolly mammoth, according to The Sun.

100 TAPEWORM EGGS FOUND INSIDE BRAIN OF 8 YEAR OLD WITH SEVERE HEADACHES, SEIZURES

“Our data demonstrate the ability of multicellular organisms to survive long-term (tens of thousands of years) cryobiosis under the conditions of natural cryoconservation,” a report provided to Fox News said.

The worms were cultivated in Petri dishes at about 20 degrees Celsius, or 68 degrees Fahrenheit, for several weeks.(East2West)

“It is obvious that this ability suggests that the Pleistocene nematodes have some adaptive mechanisms that may be of scientific and practical importance for the related fields of science, such as cryomedicine, cryobiology, and astrobiology,” it continued.

Cryobiology is the study of living things at extremely low temperatures.

The worms were cultivated in Petri dishes at about 20 degrees Celsius, or 68 degrees Fahrenheit, for several weeks, the study said.

MASSIVE 18-INCH HAMMERHEAD WORMS ARE INVADING FRANCE

Scientists believe both worms are females, according to a report provided to Fox News.

Nematodes are known for their ability to sustain long periods of time in unfavorable conditions, including in extremely low temperatures, the report said.

They are the oldest living animals currently on the planet, the Siberian Times reported.

The research was conducted by teams from multiple Russian institutions as well as Princeton University in New Jersey.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/science/russian-worms-frozen-for-nearly-42000-years-alive-and-well-scientists-say

[Here are some amazing facts about this dwarf planet: It is 2,000 times further away from the Sun than the Earth! That makes it 2.5 times further away than Pluto. Even crazier, this dwarf planet takes 40,000 years to revolve once around the Sun!]

12 new moons discovered around Jupiter

“This new object has the largest orbit of all the extremely distant objects that stay well beyond Pluto,” Sheppard said. Given its orbit, the Goblin never comes close enough to the giant planets in our solar system to be affected by their gravitational influence.

It joins other objects Sheppard and his team have found on the edge of the solar system since 2012. Their isolation makes them unique. “They can be used as probes to understand what is happening at the edge of our solar system,” Sheppard said.

The researchers were able to detect the Goblin in the first place because they’re using the Japanese Subaru telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, one of the largest telescopes in the world and the most powerful survey telescope due to its large field of view.

Given the object’s slow movement along an elongated orbit, it took Sheppard and his team a few years of observing to understand the Goblin and its orbit.

Quest for Planet Nine turns up ‘extreme objects’ on edge of solar system

“We think there could be thousands of small bodies like 2015 TG387 out on the Solar System’s fringes, but their distance makes finding them very difficult,” Tholen said in a statement. “Currently we would only detect 2015 TG387 when it is near its closest approach to the Sun. For some 99 percent of its 40,000-year orbit, it would be too faint to see.”

So if the Goblin is unaffected by the gas giant planets in our solar system, what contributes to its strange orbit? That’s where Planet X comes in.

Like the other objects found by Sheppard and his team on the edge of the solar system, the Goblin behaves in a way that is pushed into a similar orbit by some unseen force.

Based on simulations using the basic parameters they have for Planet X, the researchers say the Goblin acts like it is “shepherded” by the planet but never nears the proposed massive planet. This is similar to why Pluto never gets too close to the gas giant Neptune, although their orbits actually cross.

“These distant objects are like breadcrumbs leading us to Planet X,” Sheppard said. “The more of them we can find, the better we can understand the outer Solar System and the possible planet that we think is shaping their orbits — a discovery that would redefine our knowledge of the Solar System’s evolution.”

Sheppard and his colleagues continue their survey, the largest and deepest ever for distant solar system objects, by observing the northern and southern skies at all times of year.

“We are very uniform in our sky coverage and can find all types of orbits, yet we seem to only be finding objects with similar types of orbits that are on the same side of the sky, suggesting something is shepherding them into these similar types of orbits, which we believe is Planet X,” Sheppard said.

“What makes this result really interesting is that Planet X seems to affect 2015 TG387 the same way as all the other extremely distant Solar System objects. These simulations do not prove that there’s another massive planet in our Solar System, but they are further evidence that something big could be out there,” Trujillo said in a statement.

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/02/us/planet-x-search-new-object/index.html

[This is a fun video and don’t miss the No 1 creature on the video! Freaking awesome science! I really enjoyed this little video. This is where I learned about the 52 hertz whale. Jan]

The ocean is without doubt the most fascinating place on this planet. This quote pretty much sums it up…. “Earth Should be Named Planet Ocean, Not Planet Earth”. That couldn’t be more true. We are surrounded by ocean, yet for the most part, we have no idea what creatures are sharing the planet with us. In this video you will see five truly awesome underwater creatures that prove the ocean has far more to offer than what we think. So, from an enormous deep sea shark, to a mysterious alien like creature that was washed up on a beach. Sit back & enjoy this video!

The mummified body of a Russian climber who went missing 31 years ago on Europe’s highest mountain has been found. Elena Bazykina reportedly looked like a “wax doll” as her body was pulled from Mount Elbrus in southern Russia.

Source: https://cnmnewz.com/2018/08/30/body-of-russian-climber-missing-for-31-years-found-preserved-in-ice-like-a-wax-doll/

Blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin, has captured the interest of everyone from Facebook to Microsoft. One of the biggest investors in the technology has been Mastercard, holding nearly thirty blockchain patents to its name.

STOPPING THE SKIMMERS

According to the ATM Industry Association, two billion in losses from credit card “skimming” occur each year around the world. Using a skimming device at places like gas stations and ATMs, thieves can easily steal credit card information from those who previously used it. While chip cards have done a lot to solve that problem, companies like Mastercard always need to stay one step ahead of hackers.

“Every year, billions of dollars are stolen through identity theft and skimming credit cards,” said Arran Stewart, an expert on blockchain from Job.com, told Digital Trends. “Utilizing blockchain technology, Mastercard will be able to eradicate many of the fraudulent activities that happen through the abuse of their card services.”

Stewart is the co-owner of the recruitment platform Job.com, which implements a smart contract on the blockchain to facilitate private information, not unlike how Mastercard proposes to do it.

Mastercard’s patent would put credit cards on a publicly-accessible blockchain, which can then verify payments in a secured fashion. Stewart explained that Mastercard could remedy the problem by encoding an image of a payment card to the blockchain and then encrypt it with a public and private key. Once the payment is finished, the system decrypts the card image using those private keys.

Despite blockchain’s many demonstrated use cases, its application in finances have always been important. It’s the backbone of how a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin functions — a public database that allows the currency to exist without direct oversight from a single entity, known as a “distributed ledger.”

However, Mastercard’s interest in blockchain goes far beyond this single patent. In fact, the company is one of the largest holders of blockchain-related patents in the world.

BLOCKCHAIN MONEY

In the last few months, Mastercard has created a program that allows developers to build new applications on top of its own set of APIs. That helps Mastercard work closer with companies like PayPal and Apple and opens interesting new opportunities that take blockchain even further.

Consider the tourism and hospitality industry. Mastercard has developed a platform that would let travelers to plans and personal information privately, and then reap the reward of finding the best deals for their trip.

“Mastercard has recognized the value in the travel industry and are providing a platform that allows holidaymakers/travel seekers and others to tell the tourism world where they wish to go privately through blockchain encryption,” said Stewart. “Airlines, travel companies, hotels and many others will be able to bid to offer that user the best possible price and service over other competing bidding providers, all powered on Mastercard’s blockchain.”

It’s a fascinating idea, but tourism is only the tip of the iceberg. Mastercard has a number of applications, from sending money, to setting budgets through voice assistants, paying employees instantly and securely, and, most interestingly, something it calls “proof of provenance.” It’s a way of creating a transparent supply chain that both consumers and wholesalers will have access to. That could help both restaurants and ordinary people keep track of where the food on their plate comes from.

“Transparency in the supply chain has been something that consumers and wholesalers have been looking for since supply goods began,” said Stewart. “Proof of provenance is the future of knowing where and how goods and services reach the hands of the consumer. Blockchain will be the backbone of this and one major example of this being put into practice will be Amazon utilizing this technology to provide evidence of the supply of their goods. This technology will also reduce loss, damage, theft and time to deliver within any supply chain.”

Obviously, Mastercard isn’t the only financial company developing new technology on the blockchain. Competitors like Visa and American Express aren’t far behind, and both have numerous secured patents in the blockchain world. Despite the fact that Mastercard is ahead of the pack, Visa patented a “digital asset network” based in blockchain in August of last year. What it’ll do with these patents is still unclear, but it seems Mastercard won’t be the only player in the game.

While we shouldn’t expect financial institutions to embrace cryptocurrency anytime soon, it’s clear our money is going to function a lot more like Bitcoin than dollar bills in the future.

Source: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-mastercard-is-making-real-money-more-like-bitcoin/