[I find the science relating to distant stars and planets fascinating. It is amazing the kinds of things they can deduce. The heroes you never hear about are the people who built the amazing equipment like the telescopes. Jan]

Coarse clouds of hot sand blow in the powerful winds of these two failed stars.

An illustration of the powerful storms and clouds of silicate found in the atmosphere of the brown dwarfs. (Image credit: NASA/JPL–Caltech/University of Western Ontario/Stony Brook University/Tim Pyle)
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has discovered stormy weather in the sky of two brown dwarfs in the most detailed weather report yet from such "failed stars."

The two brown dwarfs form a binary pair called WISE 1049AB that was discovered by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) in 2013; the duo sits just 6.5 light-years away from us. They are the closest brown dwarfs to our sun, and thus make an excellent target for the James Webb Space Telescope’s powerful infrared instruments.

A brown dwarf is an object that isn’t quite massive enough to ignite the nuclear fusion of hydrogen to helium in its core and become a fully fledged star — yet is also considered too massive to be a planet and thought to form like stars do (via the gravitational collapse of a cloud of molecular gas). As such, brown dwarfs are thought of as a missing link between gas giant planets like Jupiter, and the lowest mass stars, M-dwarfs.

Previous observations have probed the atmosphere of various brown dwarfs, but they have always been limited to time-averaged snapshots, meaning we could not see things in the brown-dwarf atmosphere changing with time. However, brown dwarfs are fast rotators — WISE 1049A spins on its axis once every 7 hours, and B once every 5 hours — and the conditions in their atmospheres can alter over time, meaning that previous observations that didn’t factor in the objects’ evolutions could have missed lots of variability.

The JWST, however, does have the ability to detect these changes over time. A team led by Beth Biller of the University of Edinburgh observed WISE 1049AB for 8 hours with the JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), and then immediately afterward for another 7 hours with its Near-Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec).

The researchers found that both brown dwarfs are covered in tumultuous clouds, probably composed of silicate grains, sweltering in temperatures between 875 degrees Celsius (1,610 degrees F) and 1,026 degrees Celsius (1880 degrees F). In other words, hot sand is being blown in the winds of the brown dwarfs. The absorption signatures of carbon monoxide, methane and water vapor were also identified.

Intriguingly, the light curve for each brown dwarf (a graph of each brown dwarf’s brightness over time) displays considerable variability. This has been interpreted as stormy conditions blowing clouds at various altitudes, and gaps appearing between those clouds that allows for views into deeper layers of the atmosphere. The light curves also show peaks at specific wavelengths — carbon monoxide at 2.3 microns and 4.2 microns (millionths of a meter), methane at 3.3 microns, and silicate grains tentatively at 8.3 microns to 8.5 microns.

A large orange sphere in space. A smaller glowing object is in the background toward the left.

Biller’s team interpret the peaks at these wavelengths as indicating three different layers where there is a significant change in atmospheric pressure on each brown dwarf. There’s a deep layer producing signals greater than 2.3 microns but less than 8.5 microns, an intermediate altitude layer absorbing light at between 2.3 and 4.2 microns, and a high altitude layer with exhibiting signals between 4.2 and 8.5 microns.

The findings indicate the power of the JWST to be able to probe, for the first time, the vertical profile (i.e. the conditions at different depths) of the atmosphere of a brown dwarf, and, in fact, there’s no reason the JWST has to stop there. As the research paper describing the findings concludes: "This is the first such study, but will not be the last — in the next few observing cycles, JWST will transform our understanding of both brown dwarf and young, giant exoplanet atmospheres."

"Our findings show that we are on the cusp of transforming our understanding of worlds far beyond our own," said Biller in a statement. "Insights such as these can help us understand the conditions not just on celestial objects like brown dwarfs, but also on giant exoplanets beyond our solar system. Eventually, the techniques we are refining here may enable the first detections of weather on habitable planets like our own, which orbit other stars."

The findings were published on July 15 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Source: https://www.space.com/brown-dwarf-alien-weather-report-jwst?utm_term=AF536F6D-055D-443A-91F7-FD448D0CCA73&lrh=4cd1bd23c622eeb1274411ac3b55b43215b8c098a20f14a3285c9e8ae13a98ca&utm_campaign=58E4DE65-C57F-4CD3-9A5A-609994E2C5A9&utm_medium=email&utm_content=68A6599E-B1E6-4C4A-8A32-089A418403E1&utm_source=SmartBrief

[This tiny underground animal with human-like skin lives for 100 years and regrows legs and internal organs. Scientists are trying to figure out how it manages to do these things. Jan]

Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYfdE78vnZM

Jupiter is essentially an "ocean of gas."

How different are Jupiter’s gaseous layers and Earth’s oceans? Perhaps not as much as you expect.

Lia Siegelman, a physical oceanographer at the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, has been studying Jupiter through the lens of Earth’s oceans to determine what powers the gas giant’s raging cyclones. "Jupiter is basically an ocean of gas," she said in a statement.

Siegelman’s original research, published in 2022, demonstrated that Jovian cyclones are powered by convection much in the same way Earth’s storms are. Following up on that study, she and her team are now analyzing filaments, or "wispy tendrils" found between the Jupiter’s vortices, seen in satellite imagery of the gas giant taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

Calculating the horizontal wind speed of the world’s clouds and filaments through an analysis of infrared images, Siegelman noticed that the filaments appeared to behave similarly to fronts in Earth’s ocean and atmosphere, like cold fronts or storm fronts. These fronts represent a boundary between masses with different densities (on Earth, that’s usually dependent on temperature of the atmosphere and salinity of the ocean). Fronts are typically associated with strong winds or currents along their edges, which could help power Jupiter’s cyclones.

The team then used methods from oceanography and atmospheric science to calculate the vertical wind speeds of the filaments, which confirmed the similarity in behavior between Earth-based fronts and Jovian ones. Through this process, the team determined that the filaments help transport heat energy from Jupiter’s interior to its upper atmosphere, thus contributing to approximately "a quarter of the total kinetic energy powering Jupiter’s cyclones and forty percent of the vertical heat transport," per the statement.

"It’s fascinating that fronts and convection are present and influential on Earth and Jupiter — it suggests that these processes may also be present on other turbulent fluid bodies in the universe,” said Siegelman. "There is some cosmic beauty in finding out that these physical mechanisms on Earth exist on other faraway planets."

Source: https://www.space.com/jupiter-gas-cyclones-earth-oceans

[Years ago, I was very skeptical about Black Holes. This German is bringing back my old skepticism. I like the way this guy thinks. Jan]

Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9QL_szUjeg

[There is no limit to the amazing, unstoppable Western Science. Jan]

Mayo Clinic this week reported the results of the world’s first total larynx transplant on an active cancer patient. Four months after surgery, 59-year-old Marty Kedian has regained his ability to speak, swallow, and breathe independently.

Kedian, diagnosed with a rare form of laryngeal cancer called chondrosarcoma, underwent the complex 21-hour surgery as part of a clinical trial in February. The procedure involved transplanting his cancerous larynx (also known as the voice box) and other organs, including his pharynx, upper trachea, and thyroid (see overview). This marks the third documented total larynx transplant in the US and one of only a few documented worldwide. About 12,650 people in the US will be diagnosed with laryngeal cancer this year, or about 0.6% of all new cancer cases.

Separately, Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D, VA-10)—who was diagnosed last year with a rare neurological disorder that affects her ability to speak, hear, and move—debuted a new AI-generated voice, using recordings from before her diagnosis.

[These experiments are interesting. I'm curious what the results will be. Jan]

As many of us experienced during lockdowns, it’s not easy to stay sane and productive in an enclosed environment. But four volunteers for a NASA experiment have tested this to its limits by spending more than a year confined to a simulation of a Mars outpost.

In NASA’s Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) mission, four volunteers have spent 378 days in a simulated Mars environment designed to look and feel as much like Mars as is possible here on Earth. They lived in a 3D-printed habitat, performed science jobs, and could only communicate with the outside world via ground control.

“For more than a year, the crew simulated Mars mission operations, including ‘Marswalks,’” grew and harvested several vegetables to supplement their shelf-stable food, maintained their equipment and habitat, and operated under additional stressors a Mars crew will experience, including communication delays with Earth, resource limitations, and isolation,” NASA explained in a statement.

The idea was to test what some of the health implications were for crew members on long-duration missions. With a limited diet and some high exercise demands — such as performing simulated Marswalks using a treadmill where they had to walk for long periods — researchers wanted to check the effects of these conditions on their physical health. Plus, there was also the important issue of group psychology and mental health during such a long period of relative isolation.

Now that this phase of the experiment has come to an end, the crew is getting ready to leave their habitat for the first time in a year. They will be exiting the simulated Mars environment this Saturday, July 6.

CHAPEA Mission 1 Crew Egress
If you’re curious to see what it’s like to leave an enclosed environment after more than a year, NASA will be live-streaming the crew members as they leave their habitat on Saturday, July 6. The coverage will include a ceremony to welcome the crew back to “Earth” life, plus discussions with NASA experts about the experiment and its potential for future Mars missions. Panelists include Kjell Lindgren, a NASA astronaut and deputy director of flight operations, plus several scientists and engineers who worked on the mission.

Source: https://www.digitaltrends.com/space/nasa-chapea-crew-leaving/

Engineers continue analyzing several issues that have cropped up during Starliner’s first-ever astronaut flight.

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The first crewed mission of Boeing’s Starliner capsule has been in orbit for more than a month now, and it still doesn’t have a return date.

Starliner launched June 5 on Crew Flight Test (CFT), carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station (ISS) for a planned week-long stay. The capsule experienced helium leaks and thruster problems during the trip, however, and engineers are still looking into what caused them — which means Starliner hasn’t been cleared for departure yet.

"We’re taking our time on the ground to go through all the data before we decide on the return opportunity," Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said during a press conference on Wednesday (July 10).

NASA, Boeing and the two CFT astronauts still have confidence in Starliner, however. During a separate media event on Wednesday, for example, Wilmore praised the capsule’s on-orbit capabilities during operational checks. "The spacecraft performed unbelievably well," he said.

Wilmore also discussed the issues with Starliner’s reaction control system (RCS) thrusters during its chasedown of the ISS, and how the mission dealt with them.

"We lost an RCS jet, and then another one, and then you could tell the thrust, the control, the capability, was degraded," he explained. "Thankfully, we had practiced, and we had gotten certified for manual control, and so we took over manual control for over an hour."

After arriving at the ISS on June 6, Wilmore and Williams integrated into the station’s Expedition 71 crew, which, according to Williams, is now unofficially being called "Expedition 71+." Wilmore and Williams have taken on daily maintenance responsibilities and science experiments, and they’ve been able to close the gap on a handful of backlogged station tasks. Throughout their mission, the duo have also continued their checkouts of Starliner’s many systems and the anomalies they have encountered, which are also being scrutinized by Boeing engineers back on Earth to determine their cause.

Stich emphasized the meticulous approach taken to analyze data and replicate the spacecraft’s thruster issues during testing at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico. One advantage of the ISS, he said, is its ability to serve as a temporary orbital "hangar," providing a unique opportunity to understand Starliner’s long-term performance in space before undocking.

In addition to the thruster issues, several helium leaks have been identified in the Starliner capsule. "There were a number of specific actions that were identified from both the helium and the thruster anomalies," Mark Nappi, Boeing’s vice president and Commercial Crew Program manager, said on Wednesday. "It’s just a little bit over 30 [actions], of which more than half of them are closed at the moment."

"On the helium leak, we hope to bring that into the Starliner mission management team for final resolution later this week," Stich said. Despite these problems, agency officials said that the spacecraft is rated to leave the ISS in case of an emergency, with all but one of its 28 RCS thrusters cleared for use during reentry to Earth’s atmosphere.

The decision to extend Starliner’s mission has also provided ground teams with additional time they weren’t expecting. According to Nappi, Amy Decker, of Starliner’s chief engineer’s office, says the extra data they’re getting is "AWESOME, in all caps."

"The more time you have to get more data," Nappi said, "the more excited [the engineers get]."

Boeing’s white and blue Starliner spacecraft docked at the International Space Station in June 2024.

Boeing’s Starliner is seen docked to the International Space Station during Crew Flight Test in June 2024. (Image credit: NASA)
The absolute latest Starliner could return with Wilmore and Williams, according to Stich, would be mid-August.

"The big driver is the handover that we have coming up between Crew-8 and Crew-9, which is in mid-August," Stich said, referring to two SpaceX astronaut missions to the ISS. "So … a few days before that [Crew-9] launch opportunity, we would need to get Butch and Suni home on Starliner."

Ideally, though, they will come home sooner. "We’re really working to try to follow the data and see when’s the earliest that we could target for undock and landing," Stich said. "I think some of the data suggests, optimistically, maybe it’s by the end of July, but we’ll just follow the data each step at a time, and figure out when the right undock opportunity is."

"We do have a lot of confidence in the thrusters as they are today," Nappi said, mentioning an on-orbit thruster test fire that Starliner performed while docked at the ISS.

"What we’re doing is just taking the time to make sure that we have looked under every rock and every stone, and just to make sure that there’s nothing else that would surprise us," Stich added in response.

CFT follows two prior uncrewed Starliner missions to the ISS. The first, in December 2019, failed to reach the orbiting lab after experiencing a number of glitches. The second, in May 2022, successfully docked but also experienced thruster issues.

"We knew there’d be some learning from this flight test," said Nappi. "We’ve learned a great deal from how the hardware works, how our processes work, and how we can improve."

As of now, "there’s one thruster that was producing very low thrust that we would disable for the rest of the flight," Stich explained. The extended stay at the ISS also helps teams get the spacecraft ready for future operational astronaut missions, which are planned to last up to six months, beginning with Starliner-1 sometime in 2025.

Tests at White Sands during CFT have helped planners look ahead to that first operational mission, and how to prevent similar thruster issues from cropping up.

According to Stich, Starliner’s thruster pulses were fired more frequently than engineers had expected this time around.

"What we’re trying to do at White Sands," he said, "is really replicating exactly what those pulses were that the thrusters saw, and then understand the heating effects from those pulses, and just to make sure that there’s no unintended consequences of those pulses."

Stich said he thinks there’s a way to take what the teams have observed with the thrusters during CFT to modify their requirements for future rendezvous and docking maneuvers. "I think that’s the work in front of us for Starliner-1," he said.

As the CFT mission continues, the focus remains on ensuring a safe return for Wilmore and Williams. "Starliner is ‘go’ to return in an emergency," Stich confirmed. The team is working through the process, including a return flight readiness review, to prepare for Starliner’s eventual undocking and landing.

Source: https://www.space.com/boeing-starliner-no-return-date-from-iss?utm_term=AF536F6D-055D-443A-91F7-FD448D0CCA73&lrh=4cd1bd23c622eeb1274411ac3b55b43215b8c098a20f14a3285c9e8ae13a98ca&utm_campaign=58E4DE65-C57F-4CD3-9A5A-609994E2C5A9&utm_medium=email&utm_content=E6A42F4C-FB4A-4FA8-AF1F-84CC593B5283&utm_source=SmartBrief

Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixSCZwFCQlc

Bumblebees and chimpanzees can learn skills from their peers so complicated that they could never have mastered them on their own, an ability previously thought to be unique to humans, two studies said on Wednesday.

One of humanity’s crowning talents is called "cumulative culture"—our ability to build up skills, knowledge and technology over time, improving them as they pass down through the generations.

This ability to transfer abilities no individual could learn by themselves is credited with helping driving humanity’s rise and domination of the world.

"Imagine that you dropped some children on a deserted island," said Lars Chittka, a behavioral ecologist at the Queen Mary University of London and co-author of the bee study.

"They might—with a bit of luck—survive, but they would never know how to read or to write because this requires learning from previous generations," he said in a video published with the study in the journal Nature.

Previous experiments have demonstrated that some animals are capable of what is known as social learning—working out how to do something by observing others of their kind.

Some of these behaviors seem to have been perfected over time, such as the incredible navigational talent of homing pigeons or chimpanzees’ ability to crack nuts, suggesting they could be examples of cumulative culture.

But it is difficult for scientists to rule out that an individual pigeon or chimp could not have worked out how to do achieve these feats by themselves.

So a UK-led team of researchers turned to the humble bumblebee.

‘So surprised’
The first step was training a crack squad of "demonstrators" to do a complex skill that they could later teach to others.

In the lab, some bees were given a two-step puzzle box. They were tasked with first pushing a blue tab, then a red tab to release the sugary prize at the end.

Alice Bridges, a study co-author also from Queen Mary University, told AFP: "This task is really difficult for bees because we are essentially asking them to learn to do something in exchange for nothing" during the first step.

Initially, the baffled bees just tried to push the red tab—without first moving the blue one—and simply gave up.

To motivate the bees, the researchers put a sugary treat at the end of this first step which was gradually withdrawn as they mastered the process.

See and bee seen: the humble bumblebee could also be capable of what is called "cumulative culture," research says.
The demonstrators were then paired up with some new "naive" bees, which watched the demonstrators solve the puzzle before having a go themselves.

Five of the 15 naive bees swiftly completed the puzzle—without needing a reward after the first stage.

"We were so surprised," Bridges said. "We were all just going crazy" when it first happened, she said.

Alex Thornton, a professor of cognitive evolution at the UK’s University of Exeter not involved in the research, acknowledged that it was a small sample size.

"But the point is clear—the task was exceptionally hard to learn alone, yet some bees could solve it through social learning," he wrote in a comment piece in Nature.

The authors of the research said it was the first demonstration of cumulative culture in an invertebrate.

Chimp off the old block
Chimpanzees—our closest living relatives—also seem to possess this talent, according to a separate study in Nature Human Behaviour.

The puzzle box for a troupe of semi-wild chimpanzees at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage in Zambia was a little more difficult.

It involved retrieving a wooden ball, holding open a drawer, slotting in the ball then closing it to release the peanut prize.

Over three months, 66 chimps tried and failed to solve the puzzle.

Then the Dutch-led team of researchers trained two demonstrator chimpanzees to show the others how it was done.

After two months, 14 "naive" chimps had mastered it.

And the more the chimps watched the demonstrators, the quicker they learned to solve the problem.

Bridges said the studies "can’t help but fundamentally challenge the idea that cumulative culture is this extremely complex, rare ability that only the very ‘smartest’ species—e.g. humans—are capable of".

Thornton said the research again showed how "people habitually overestimate their abilities relative to those of other animals".

More information: Alice D. Bridges et al, Bumblebees socially learn behaviour too complex to innovate alone, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07126-4

Edwin J. C. van Leeuwen et al, Chimpanzees use social information to acquire a skill they fail to innovate, Nature Human Behaviour (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01836-5

Journal information: Nature , Nature Human Behaviour

Source: https://phys.org/news/2024-03-humans-bees-chimps-skills.html

Using ancient DNA, archaeologists in France have pieced together two elaborate Neolithic family trees that span multiple generations, making them the largest ancestral human record ever reconstructed.

The family trees are based on a 6,700-year-old funerary site known as Gurgy, which is located in the Paris Basin region of northern France. Researchers excavated the site in the mid-2000s but, due to advancements in obtaining and analyzing ancient DNA data, recently began studying the genomes of 94 of the 128 individuals, which included children and adults, whose remains were recovered from the site, according to a study published July 26 in the journal Nature.

Neolithic communities first emerged roughly 12,000 years ago in the Near East, a region that encompasses West Asia, Southeastern Europe and North Africa. During this time period, many human groups transitioned from hunting and gathering to farming. This lifestyle change enabled people to put down roots and settle into communities that spread across generations, leading to the extensive burial plot.

"The size of a family tree that huge for that time period" was mind boggling, lead study author Maïté Rivollat, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Archaeology at Ghent University in Belgium, told Live Science. "We realized that we could explore social aspects of this community."

The site was composed of a single graveyard with no monument or grave goods, and many of the bones were "not well preserved and corroded," Rivollat said.

Still, "the bones were good enough [to extract] DNA," she said, "and we were able to get DNA from 94 of the individuals."

Researchers discovered that the family’s descendants stemmed from a single "founding father." His skeleton was unique, since it was initially buried at an unknown site and was later moved near his kin at Gurgy, according to a statement. (The archaeologists also found the remains of a woman buried next to him but were unable to extract any DNA.)

By analyzing the mitochondrial DNA (maternal lineages) and Y-chromosome (paternal lineages) data, as well as each individual’s age at death and genetic sex, the researchers constructed two family trees. The first tree connected 64 individuals across seven generations and is the largest to date, and the second contained 12 people from five generations, according to the study.

Soon, a "patrilineal pattern" emerged in which generations were linked through the male line of descendants. Researchers also noticed that while the men stayed within the community in which they were born, the women left, according to the statement.

"The women who were buried there weren’t related and came from somewhere else," Rivollat said. "We also noticed that inbreeding wasn’t occurring and think that this system of female movements avoided that from happening."

Another interesting aspect of the community was that it lacked half-siblings and that sons and daughters shared the same parents, suggesting that members of this family group weren’t polygamous but rather were monogamous, according to the statement.

"It became apparent that the descendants knew who was buried there," Rivollat said. "The closer they were buried together, the closer they were related."

Source: https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/largest-ever-genetic-family-tree-reconstructed-for-neolithic-people-in-france-using-ancient-dna