The Zen of Technology & Scientific Discovery! (& Robots)

[Jundo]

You have my skin, but what of flesh, bone and marrow?

Robots can now be built with living humanlike skin

For the first time, scientists learned to grow humanlike skin on a robotic finger using cells, a new study revealed. Unlike artificial skin that is commonly used when building robots, this skin is alive, said lead study author Shoji Takeuchi, project professor in the department of mechanical and biofunctional systems at the Institute of Industrial Science at the University of Tokyo.

"Living skin is the ultimate solution to give robots the look and touch of living creatures," Takeuchi said.

... The humanlike skin is made using the same building blocks as human skin, Takeuchi said. The robotic finger was first submerged in a solution of collagen, which is a fibrous protein, and human dermal fibroblasts, the two major components that make up human skin. Dermal fibroblasts are the primary cell type in the connective tissue of the skin. After the solution conformed around the finger, Takeuchi applied human epidermal keratinocytes to the outside. A keratinocyte is the main type of cell that makes up the human epidermis, the outermost layer of skin, he said. In the trials, the elastic human skin moved freely while the finger made different motions ...

... The discovery is an important one, Agrawal said, but development of the humanlike skin still has a long way to go. Skin is a living organism, so it needs to sustain itself by being constantly nourished while removing waste, Takeuchi said. Unfortunately, the current skin that was grown does not have that ability built in, so it cannot sustain itself, he said. Takeuchi is interested in adding a vascular system, the way blood is circulated throughout our body, to help shuttle nutrients to and from the cells and keep the skin alive. He also wishes to develop additional details for the skin such as hair follicles, nails and sweat glands.
https://us.cnn.com/2022/06/10/world/...scn/index.html

Gassho J

STLah

[Jundo]

Major announcement this week about a project headquartered here in Tsukuba, home to Treeleaf Zendo AND the Japanese space agency, two major explorers of the universe ...

For the first time, scientists have found the building blocks for life on an asteroid in space. Japanese researchers have discovered more than 20 amino acids on the space rock Ryugu, which is more than 200 million miles from Earth.

Scientists made the first-of-its-kind detection by studying samples retrieved from the near-Earth asteroid by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Hayabusa2 spacecraft, which landed on Ryugu in 2018. In 2019, the spacecraft collected 0.2 ounce (5.4 grams) from the asteroid's surface and subsurface, stowed it in an airtight container and launched it back to Earth on a fine-tuned trajectory.

... Hayabusa2 was groundbreaking in that it collected subsurface materials not weathered by sunlight or cosmic rays, and delivered them to Earth unexposed to outside air. ... Ryugu contains a large amount of carbon-rich organic matter, much of which likely originated from the same nebula that gave birth to the sun and the planets of the solar system roughly 4.6 billion years ago. Previous sample analysis has also suggested that the asteroid harbors water.

Kensei Kobayashi, professor emeritus of astrobiology at Yokohama National University, said the unprecedented discovery of multiple types of amino acids on an extraterrestrial body could even hint at the existence of life outside of Earth.

"Proving amino acids exist in the subsurface of asteroids increases the likelihood that the compounds arrived on Earth from space," he said.
It also means amino acids can likely be found on other planets and natural satellites, hinting that "life could have been born in more places in the universe than previously thought," Kobayashi added.

https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/06/9a7dbced6c3a-amino-acids-found-in-asteroid-samples-collected-by-hayabusa2-probe.html

and
https://www.livescience.com/20-amino...found-on-ryugu

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

The old ...

It's possible that this Gran Abuelo tree found in Alerce Costero National Park in Chile may be the oldest tree in the world.

he world's oldest tree may have been standing for centuries when the first boulders were erected at Stonehenge, new research suggests.

The ancient giant, an alerce (Fitzroya cupressoides) known as the "Gran Abuelo" (or great grandfather in Spanish) that towers over a ravine in the Chilean Andes, may be roughly 5,400 years old, a new computer model suggests. If that date can be confirmed, it would make the Gran Abuelo nearly 600 years older than the current official record holder(opens in new tab) for world's oldest tree, a Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) in California known as "Methuselah."

However, the alerce's exact age is still somewhat contested, because confirming that requires analysis of the tree's rings — a method known as dendrochronology, and the gold standard for determining a tree's age — and that data is currently incomplete.

... Whatever its age, the tree is in peril and needs to be protected, said Jonathan Barichivich, a climate and global ecology scientist at the Climate and Environmental Sciences Laboratory in Paris, and the researcher who created the model.

"It's really in poor condition because of tourism," and the tree has also been affected by climate change, Barichivich told Live Science.
https://www.livescience.com/possible...ee-found-chile

... and the small but important ...

Physicists discover never-before seen particle sitting on a tabletop

This newly-discovered particle could account for dark matter

Researchers have discovered a new particle that is a magnetic relative of the Higgs boson. Whereas the discovery of the Higgs boson required the tremendous particle-accelerating power of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), this never-before-seen particle  —  dubbed the axial Higgs boson — was found using an experiment that would fit on a small kitchen countertop.

As well as being a first in its own right, this magnetic cousin of the Higgs boson  —  the particle responsible for granting other particles their mass  —  could be a candidate for dark matter, which accounts for 85%t of the total mass of the universe but only reveals itself through gravity.

... In the Standard Model of particle physics, particles emerge from different fields that permeate the universe, and some of these particles shape the universe’s fundamental forces. For example photons mediate electromagnetism, and hefty particles known as W and Z bosons mediate the weak nuclear force, which governs nuclear decay at subatomic levels. When the universe was young and hot, however, electromagnetism and weak force were one thing and all of these particles were nearly identical. As the universe cooled, the electroweak force split, causing the W and Z bosons to gain mass and to behave very differently from photons, a process physicists have called "symmetry breaking." But how exactly did these weak-force-mediating particles get so heavy?

It turns out that these particles interacted with a separate field, known as the Higgs field. Perturbations in that field gave rise to the Higgs boson and lent the W and Z bosons their heft.

The Higgs boson is produced in nature whenever such a symmetry is broken, . "however, typically only one symmetry is broken at a time, and thus the Higgs is just described by its energy," Burch said.

The theory behind the axial Higgs boson is more complicated.

"In the case of the axial Higgs boson, it appears multiple symmetries are broken together, leading to a new form of the theory and a Higgs mode [the specific oscillations of a quantum field like the Higgs field] that requires multiple parameters to describe it: specifically, energy and magnetic momentum," Burch said.
The Higgs boson is produced in nature whenever such a symmetry is broken, . "however, typically only one symmetry is broken at a time, and thus the Higgs is just described by its energy," Burch said.

The theory behind the axial Higgs boson is more complicated.

"In the case of the axial Higgs boson, it appears multiple symmetries are broken together, leading to a new form of the theory and a Higgs mode [the specific oscillations of a quantum field like the Higgs field] that requires multiple parameters to describe it: specifically, energy and magnetic momentum," Burch said.

... and the Webb takes a hit, but survives ... as the engineers planned for it ...

Webb telescope's massive mirror hit by micrometeoroid

One of the 18 golden segments of the James Webb Space Telescope's giant mirror was hit by a micrometeoroid in May, according to an update from NASA. But don't worry -- the space observatory is still on track to share its first high-resolution, full-color images on July 12.

A micrometeoroid is a particle in space that is smaller than a grain of sand. Earth's atmosphere is hit by millions of meteoroids and micrometeoroids on a regular basis, but most are vaporized when they hit the atmosphere, according to NASA.

But spacecraft don't have a protective bubble of atmosphere around them, so it's almost impossible to avoid these impacts.

The Webb telescope sustained such an impact between May 23 and 25, but "the telescope is still performing at a level that exceeds all mission requirements despite a marginally detectable effect in the data," according to the Webb team.

The team is continuing to analyze and assess what happened and how it may affect the telescope's performance. It's also likely the first of many such experiences that Webb will have over its time in space.

... "We always knew that Webb would have to weather the space environment, which includes harsh ultraviolet light and charged particles from the Sun, cosmic rays from exotic sources in the galaxy, and occasional strikes by micrometeoroids within our solar system," said Paul Geithner, technical deputy project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement.

"We designed and built Webb with performance margin -- optical, thermal, electrical, mechanical -- to ensure it can perform its ambitious science mission even after many years in space."

Fortunately, each hexagonal mirror segment is fully adjustable, and the impacted segment has already been adjusted to lessen some of the distortion. This is something engineers can continue to do in the future as they monitor Webb's mirror for any signs of degradation in the space environment.

https://us.cnn.com/2022/06/08/world/webb-telescope-mirror-impact-scn/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

A new lease on life, we will make it for another day ...

Mile-wide asteroid, the largest yet of 2022, flies safely by Earth

There were no worries whatsoever about the space rock, which passed by at a very safe distance.

The asteroid, known as asteroid 7335 (1989 JA), is roughly four times the size of the Empire State Building and is the largest yet to pass by our planet in 2022. Viewers were able to catch the event live online through the Virtual Telescope Project (you can watch the feed embedded below), thanks to a new collaboration that includes telescopes in Chile, Australia and Rome.
https://www.livescience.com/mile-wid...earth-may-2022

https://youtu.be/JxFjKTF6YEs

In other space news, Pluto may not be a planet any more ... but there is this fun fact ...

When will Pluto complete its first orbit since its discovery?

Not until the 22nd century.

Pluto was discovered on Feb. 18, 1930, using the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh found a moving object clearly beyond the orbit of Neptune. That object was later called Pluto, the ruler of the Greek underworld in that culture's mythology.

There's a long-running debate about whether Pluto is a planet or a dwarf planet. Concerning its orbit, however, astronomers don't disagree that the world has yet to complete a single orbit since Tombaugh first spotted Pluto in imagery.

It takes Pluto 248.09 Earth years to complete one orbit around the sun. Plug that information into a ... calculator along with its discovery date, and you'd find that Pluto will complete its first full orbit since its discovery on Monday, March 23, 2178.
https://www.livescience.com/33390-pl...ete-orbit.html

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft took this enhanced color image of Pluto on July 14, 2015

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Zen leaps beyond big and small ... but small is cool ...

Northwestern engineers invent the world’s smallest remote-controlled walking robots

... Each one is about half a millimeter wide, which is smaller than the thickness of a United States penny.

... It took a year and a half to create the miniscule metal creatures, said coauthor John A. Rogers, the Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University.

His team was comprised of students across varying academic levels who combined critical- and creative-thinking skills to design robots that looked like crabs as well as other animals like inchworms and crickets, he said.

Some students found the sideways motion of crabs to be amusing, which was the inspiration behind the crab robot, Rogers said. The tiny robot can also twist, turn and jump, he added.

... The robots, which are made of a malleable shape-memory alloy, start out as flat objects, similar to a piece of paper. The legs and arms are bent so the robot can stand, he said. The crab stays standing on its legs until heat is used to get the crab to move, Rogers said.

A metallic object made of shape-memory alloy can be deformed but returns to its original shape once heat is applied to it, he explained. ... His team would heat up certain joints to partially return them to the original flattened state. When heat was applied over and over in a specific sequence, the crabs were able to move, similar to how humans bend and straighten their legs to walk.

... “A laser is a convenient way to do it because we can focus the light to a very tiny spot, and we can scan that spot around to illuminate different parts of the robot’s body in a time sequence,” he said. ... The robots are still in the developmental phase and primarily created for academic purposes, but the technology used to make the tiny crabs have potential, Rogers said.

Tiny crab robots could be used in performing minimally invasive surgeries or aid in the assembly and repair of small-scale machines, he said.

https://us.cnn.com/2022/05/25/world/...scn/index.html

Zen transcends hot and cold ... But what about the old story that the cold after the meteor strike wiped out the dinosaurs, giving warm blooded mammals a chance? ...

Fearsome predators like T. rex and towering, telescope-necked dinosaurs, such as Brachiosaurus, were warm-blooded creatures in the same way birds and mammals are, according to a groundbreaking new study.

... “This is really exciting for us as paleontologists – the question of whether dinosaurs were warm- or cold-blooded is one of the oldest questions in paleontology, and now we think we have a consensus, that most dinosaurs were warm-blooded,” said lead study author Jasmina Wiemann, a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology, in a news release.

Previous recent attempts to answer this question have suggested that dinosaurs were warm-blooded, but those findings, which involved analyzing growth rings or chemical isotope signals in bones, were ambiguous because fossilization may change these markers. Plus, those analysis techniques damage fossils, making it harder to build up a large data set.

Wiemann and her colleagues, however, came up with a new – and in their view, more definitive – method to assess a dinosaur’s metabolism. ... The researchers looked at the waste products that form when oxygen is inhaled into the body and reacts with proteins, sugars and lipids. The abundance of these waste molecules, which appear as dark-colored patches in fossils, scales in accordance with the amount of oxygen taken in and is an indicator of whether an animal is warm- or cold-blooded. The molecules are also extremely stable and don’t dissolve in water, which means they are preserved during the fossilization process.

Wiemann and her team analyzed a femur – thigh bone – of 55 different creatures, including 30 extinct and 25 modern animals. Among the samples were bones belonging to dinosaurs, giant flying reptiles called pterosaurs, marine reptiles like the plesiosaurs, and modern birds, mammals and lizards.

The scientists used an approach called infrared spectroscopy, which targets the interactions between molecules and light. This technique allowed them to quantify the number of waste molecules in the fossils. The team then compared those findings with the known metabolic rates of the modern animals and used that data to infer the metabolic rates of the extinct creatures.

Earlier generations of paleontologists had grouped dinosaurs with reptiles, leading to an assumption of a reptilian appearance and lifestyle. Today, most paleontologists agree that dinosaurs were a lot more birdlike after the discovery in the 1990s of feathered fossils, which led to the understanding modern birds are directly descended from dinosaurs.

The study, which published Wednesday in the journal Nature, found that dinosaurs’ metabolic rates were typically high and in many cases higher than modern mammals – which typically have a body temperature of around 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) – and more like birds, which have average body temperatures of around 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

However, there were notable exceptions. Dinosaurs classified as ornithischians – an order characterized by birdlike hips that includes instantly recognizable creatures such as Triceratops and Stegosaurus – evolved to have low metabolic rates comparable to those of cold-blooded modern animals.

https://us.cnn.com/2022/05/25/world/dinosaur-blood-warm-cold-scn/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Speed up, slow down, speed up ...

Hubble identifies unusual wrinkle in expansion rate of the universe

ver the past 30 years, the space observatory has helped scientists discover and refine that accelerating rate – as well as uncover a mysterious wrinkle that only brand-new physics may solve.

Hubble has observed more than 40 galaxies that include pulsating stars as well as exploding stars called supernovae to measure even greater cosmic distances. Both of these phenomena help astronomers to mark astronomical distances like mile markers, which have pointed to the expansion rate.

In the quest to understand how quickly our universe expands, astronomers already made one unexpected discovery in 1998: “dark energy.” This phenomenon acts as a mysterious repulsive force that accelerates the expansion rate.

And there is another twist: an unexplained difference between the expansion rate of the local universe versus that of the distant universe right after the big bang.

Scientists don’t understand the discrepancy, but acknowledge that it’s weird and could require new physics.

“You are getting the most precise measure of the expansion rate for the universe from the gold standard of telescopes and cosmic mile markers,” said Nobel Laureate Adam Riess at the Space Telescope Science Institute and a distinguished professor at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, in a statement.

... Multiple teams of astronomers using the Hubble telescope have arrived at a Hubble constant value that equals 73 plus or minus 1 kilometer per second per megaparsec. (A megaparsec is one million parsecs, or 3.26 million light years.)

“The Hubble constant is a very special number. It can be used to thread a needle from the past to the present for an end-to-end test of our understanding of the universe. This took a phenomenal amount of detailed work,” said Licia Verde, a cosmologist at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies and the Institute of Cosmos Science at the University of Barcelona, in a statement.

... But the actual predicted expansion rate of the universe is slower than what the Hubble telescope has observed, according to astronomers utilizing the standard cosmological model of the universe (a theory suggesting the components of the big bang) and measurements taken by the European Space Agency’s Planck mission between 2009 and 2013.

... The James Webb Space Telescope, which launched in December, will be able to observe Hubble’s mile markers in sharper resolution and at greater distances, which could contribute to understanding the discrepancy between the two numbers.

It makes for an exciting challenge to cosmologists who were once determined to measure the Hubble constant – and now find themselves questioning what additional physics may help them unlock a new mystery about the universe.
https://us.cnn.com/2022/05/23/world/...scn/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Tai Shi]

Loving Kindness came forth as two more chemicals eliminated from my brain which had caused love to be stopped, and kindness to be stunted. Doctors recognized my emotions were difficult until these two chemicals removed from my brain, and mindfulness of loving kindness came forth. For me doctors treat my brain, and mindfulness results, mind in my case involves diseased brain which has a long history of disease, and now once again made free.
Gassho
sat/lah

[Jundo]

Power of the mind, or the brain ...

https://youtu.be/ATm6z_qrEkg

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Supernova in the Sahara ...

Alien stone in Egyptian desert came from rare supernova, scientists say

The rock likely came from one of the brightest types of cosmic explosions

A strange extraterrestrial space rock unearthed in the Sahara Desert could be the first evidence on Earth for a rare type of supernova.

The chemical composition of the Hypatia stone, which was first discovered in Egypt in 1996, suggests it may contain dust and gas that once surrounded an enormous type of supernova, the spectacular explosion of a dying star.

Type Ia supernovas typically take place inside dust clouds where a white dwarf, or the shriveled husk of a collapsed star, shares an orbit with a larger, younger star that still has some fuel to burn. The smaller and denser white dwarf uses its immense gravitational pull to snatch some of the younger star’s fuel, which it gorges on relentlessly, stretching the younger star into a teardrop shape. The act of cosmic canniblism eventually ends in mutual destruction, however, as the vampiric white dwarf grows large enough for nuclear reactions to reignite in its core. After a sudden bright flash, an enormous supernova blast hurls the irradiated contents of both stars outwards to mingle and merge with the dust.

In the case of the Hypatia stone, the cocktail of dust and gas likely drifted through space over billions of years until it arrived in our cosmic backyard, eventually solidifying into the larger parent body of the Hypatia stone sometime during the birth of our solar system, the new research suggests. Once formed, likely somewhere in the outer solar system, the rock eventually hurtled to Earth, shattering into fragments as it landed.

"In a sense, we could say, we have caught a supernova Ia explosion in the act, because the gas atoms from the explosion were caught in the surrounding dust cloud, which eventually formed Hypatia's parent body," study lead author Jan Kramers, a geochemist at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, said in a statement.

To figure out where the rock came from, the researchers performed a chemical analysis of a tiny sample of the Hypatia stone using non-destructive techniques. ... Further tests, which compared the rock’s element concentrations with those we’d expect to see in our region of space, came back with even more surprising results — the stone wasn’t even from our arm of the galaxy ...

https://www.livescience.com/space-ro...pernova-traces

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

More ancient microbe news ... plankton, actually. These are not the ones from millions of years ago that they are thinking about reviving ...

'Ghost' fossils preserve haunting record of ancient life on a hellish Earth

Ghostly imprints of tiny plankton-like creatures have been found haunting the sediments of prehistoric oceans at a time when such organisms were thought to be extinct. The so-called nannofossil imprints reveal that the organisms survived acidic oceans caused by climate change, and could offer a clue for how modern creatures can endure rising ocean temperatures, researchers said.

Nannofossils are the remains of marine plankton called coccolithophores (cox-oh-LITH'-oh-fours), which belong to the class Prymnesiophyceae and still exist today at the bottom of many ocean food chains. Each of these single-celled, algae-like organisms measures less than 0.001 inch (30 micrometers) wide, and is surrounded by a hard layer of geometric calcium scales, according to the Faculty of Geosciences at the University of Bremen in Germany. And these nannofossils are incredibly abundant.

... However, there are points in the fossil record where coccolithophores appear to suddenly vanish, only to return mysteriously millions of years later. "You get these abrupt changes in the sediment where you go from almost pure white sediments into black sediments," Bown said. These points coincide with ancient ocean warming events, during which seawater became more acidic as it reacted with increased carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. ... Scientists once thought that most species of calcium-coated plankton in these acidic seas were wiped out en masse multiple times and replaced by non-shelled species ... These results suggest that, contrary to previous research, some coccolithophores survived catastrophic ocean acidification and warming die-offs, even as other species went extinct. But the low ocean pH dissolved their shells posthumously, erasing them from the fossil record.

This information could help shed light on our current climate catastrophe, the researchers said, which is already eating away at calcium-rich coral reefs, according to Smithsonian. If the coccolithophores can adapt to warmer, more acidic conditions, it may be good news for modern creatures further up the food chain.
https://www.livescience.com/ghost-na...-acidification

Well, let's not find out by repeating the catastrophe, if we can avoid it!

The images show the impressions of a collapsed cell-wall covering (a coccosphere) on the surface of a fragment of ancient organic matter (left) with the individual plates (coccoliths) enlarged to show the exquisite preservation of sub-micron-scale structures (right).


Despite their microscopic size, coccolithophores come in a stunning array of geometric shapes.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Prashanth]

I'm no astronomer, but maybe it's like the drain in the galactic bathtub? [emoji14]

In any case, the galaxy would not be here without it, so we would not be here without it. If we are made of stardust, perhaps the black hole is where our own atoms will someday return ...

These panels show the first two black hole images. On the left is M87*, and the right is Sagittarius A*.

Gassho, J

STLah

Or..we are at the bottom of a well and looking up [emoji120].

Gassho.

Sat lah

Sent from my Lenovo TB-7305F using Tapatalk

[Jundo]

Not living, not dead ...

830 million-year-old organisms found locked in ancient crystals could be resurrected

Salt crystals from Central Australia hold ancient microorganisms that became trapped 830 million years ago, new research finds.

And there's a chance that some of the microorganisms might still be alive.

The single-celled organisms are locked in tiny fluid pockets — smaller than the width of a human hair — in halite, or salt, from a formation of sedimentary rocks. The microorganisms lived nearly 1 billion years ago in what was either a shallow, salty marine environment or a shallow, salty lake. ... the status of the life inside them is unknown. However, scientists have previously claimed they resurrected primeval microorganisms found in salt crystals, so it’s possible that the Australian organisms may also still be alive.

... The new study examined halite from Australia's Browne formation ... Inside, the researchers discovered eukaryotes (algae and fungi with distinct cell nuclei) and prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea with no nuclei). ... The organisms are tiny, ranging from half a micron to 5 microns in diameter. (For comparison, a human hair is around 70 microns wide.) ...

Salt-loving microorganisms are survivors, capable of going dormant or otherwise altering their metabolisms to stay alive during times when the water around them dries up, Schreder-Gomes said. In 2000, scientists claimed to have revived a 250-million-year-old bacterium from salt, though they could not definitively prove that their zombie bacteria weren't modern contaminates. Other very old microorganisms have been revived with more certainty, including 101.5 million-year-old bacteria from seafloor sediments. The researchers have not, at this point, breached the crystals to find out if the Australian microorganisms might have a chance at a second life. "If they were able to survive 250 million years, why not a few hundred million years more?" Schreder-Gomes said. "It's certainly a possibility for the future to try to culture them." ...

... The Browne formation rocks formed in a similar environment to the environment that likely existed on ancient Mars, Schreder-Gomes said. The methods the team used to study the organisms could also be used to search for long-gone microorganisms from the Red Planet. The Perseverance Mars rover is caching rocks that will eventually be brought to Earth, and non-destructive techniques will be necessary to understand the context of those rocks' formations ...
https://www.livescience.com/ancient-life-salt-crystals

Hmmm. Having seen my share of SF movies, I wonder if this is really a good idea ...

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

More than just a ball of fire ...

Solar Orbiter reveals a never-before-seen look at our sun


The Solar Orbiter mission’s first close pass of the sun in March has revealed our star in a new light.

The spacecraft, which flew by the sun on March 26, has returned a treasure trove of new images and insights after coming within one-third the distance from the sun to the Earth. Solar Orbiter’s heat shield reached about 932 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees Celsius), but functioned as expected and protected the spacecraft during its historic first flyby.

Solar Orbiter comes equipped with a multilayer heat shield, a special coating called “Solar Black” made using burnt bone and sliding doors that protect its instruments. The spacecraft also has solar arrays that can tilt away from the worst of the heat and cooling elements in its interior. Together, these keep the spacecraft from melting as it studies the sun.

The mission, a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency, captured views of powerful flares and coronal mass ejections and perspectives of the unexplored solar poles. The orbiter even spied a new feature nicknamed the “hedgehog, a feature [the feature in the bottom third of the following image] that stretches for 15,534 miles (25,000 kilometers) on the sun and has spikes of hot and cold gas. Currently, there is no explanation of what it is or how it formed in the sun’s atmosphere.

It’s important to understand the solar cycle because space weather caused by the sun – eruptions like solar flares and coronal mass ejection events – can impact the power grid, satellites, GPS, airlines, rockets and astronauts in space.

Every 11 years, the sun completes a solar cycle of calm and stormy activity and begins a new one. The current solar cycle, Solar Cycle 25, officially began in December 2019, and the next solar maximum, when the sun is experiencing peak activity, is predicted to occur in July 2025.

Over the course of a solar cycle, the sun transitions from a calm period to one that is very intense and active. This activity is tracked by counting sunspots and how many are visible over time. Sunspots, or dark spots on the sun, are the origin point for the explosive flares and ejection events that release light, solar material and energy into space.

This puts Solar Orbiter, and another mission called Parker Solar Probe, in perfect position to watch as we head toward solar maximum.

... Solar Orbiter also captured a movie of an active area on the sun where the magnetic field releases loops that rise int the atmosphere. Gas moves around the loops, cools and creates “coronal rain” on the sun’s surface. The science team also saw “coronal moss,” where bright gas creates lacy patterns on the sun.

... The Solar Orbiter mission is designed to study the sun’s outer atmosphere, called the corona, and determine how the sun interacts with the heliosphere, a bubble full of charged particles released by the sun that extends beyond the planets in our solar system. Space weather is created when the sun releases its stream of charged particles, called the solar wind, as well as activity by the solar magnetic fields.The corona can reach a million degrees Celsius (1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit), while the surface is 5,000 degrees Celsius (9,000 degrees Fahrenheit). Solar Orbiter could help determine why the temperature seems to rise away from the sun’s core, rather than drop.
...

https://us.cnn.com/2022/05/18/world/esa-solar-orbiter-hedgehog-new-images-scn/index.html

https://youtu.be/RZuUGul-Zzw
The Sun’s active regions: coronal rain and solar moss

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

They are having some pesky technical problems with the 45 year old Voyager 1 space probe (hey, when ya hit that age, we all get our little aches and pains) ... but the article contained some amazing facts ...

The Voyager 1 probe is still exploring interstellar space 45 years after launching ... Voyager 1 continues to operate well, despite its advanced age and 14.5 billion-mile distance (23.3 billion kilometers) from Earth. And it can receive and execute commands sent from NASA, as well as gather and send back science data.

... Due to Voyager’s interstellar location, it takes light 20 hours and 33 minutes to travel one way, so the call and response of one message between NASA and Voyager takes two days. ...

... Voyager 2, a twin spacecraft, continues to operate well in interstellar space 12.1 billion miles (19.5 billion kilometers) from Earth. By comparison, Neptune, the farthest planet from Earth, is, at most, only 2.9 billion miles away. Both probes were launched in 1977 and have far exceeded their original purpose to fly by planets.

Now, they have become the only two spacecraft to gather data from interstellar space and provide insights about the heliosphere, or the bubble created by the sun that extends beyond the planets in our solar system.https://us.cnn.com/2022/05/18/world/...scn/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Not only part of the immune system, but seemingly with a possible role in "sculpting" the developing human body ...

Scientists finally have proof of mysterious immune cell in humans

These mysterious cells emerge in the womb.

While working to map every cell in the human body, scientists uncovered an elusive type of immune cell that first emerges in the womb. The existence of such cells in humans has been hotly debated — until now.

These mysterious cells, known as B-1 cells, were first discovered in mice in the 1980s, according to a 2018 review in The Journal of Immunology. These cells arise early in mouse development, in the womb, and they produce various antibodies when activated. Some of these antibodies latch onto the mouse's own cells and help to clear dying and dead cells from the body. Activated B-1 cells also make antibodies that act as a first line of defense against pathogens, like viruses and bacteria.

After the discovery of B-1 cells in mice, a research group reported in 2011 that they'd found equivalent cells in humans, but these results were not accepted as conclusive proof. ... Now, a new study, published Thursday (May 12) in the journal Science, provides solid evidence that B-1 cells emerge in early human development, within the first and second trimester.

... What purpose might these special cells serve in a developing human? They may help to sculpt new tissues as they form, Teichmann said.

"When you think about fetal development, in general, there's a massive remodeling of tissues happening all the time," Baumgarth said. For example, humans initially develop webbing between their fingers, but this webbing gets trimmed back before birth. It may be that B-1 cells help direct such tissue trimming during development, but "that's speculation, on my part," she said.

In addition to sculpting tissues, the B-1 cells may provide some level of immune protection against pathogens small enough to cross the placental barrier, Baumgarth said. Again, this is speculation, she said.

The new study expands our understanding of how B-1 cells initially develop and could lay the groundwork for future studies into how the cells function later in life, Rothstein said.

https://www.livescience.com/newfound...l-immune-cells

The human body, and maybe the whole world, truly a team effort of so many needed players ...

Gassho, J

STLah