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

[Jundo]

Everything is a bit different in Australia, is it not?

Strange, spiral bee combs look like fantastical crystal palaces. Now we know why.

These Australian bees might be following the same rules that crystals use to grow.

In a world of bland hexagonal honeycombs, a small group of rebellious Australian bees has chosen to build spiral staircases.

Meet the bees of the genus Tetragonula. These Aussie pollinators have no stingers, but make up for their defensive deficiencies by building mesmerizing fortresses of wax whose beauty has long captivated the Internet.

These spiral structures are actually giant, swirly nests called "brood combs." Each little circular cell is an egg chamber, built by a wax-secreting worker bee, provisioned with regurgitated food by a nurse bee, then filled with an egg by the queen herself. When one cell is done, workers move on to the next one, building outward and upward in a spiral pattern that can sometimes reach 20 stories tall, Tim Heard, an entomologist with The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Australia, previously told Live Science.

... "These combs follow the same basic rules that cause crystals to grow up in a spiral pattern," study co-author Julyan Cartwright, a researcher at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) who studies mathematical patterns in nature, told Live Science. "Each bee is basically following an algorithm."

https://www.livescience.com/tetragon...-crystals.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

This was not done with the camera on somebody's phone!

Multiplanet system around sunlike star photographed for 1st time ever

The two newly imaged planets are huge — 14 and 6 times more massive than Jupiter.


For the first time ever, astronomers have directly imaged multiple planets orbiting a sunlike star.

The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile photographed two giant planets circling TYC 8998-760-1, a very young analogue of our own sun that lies about 300 light-years from Earth, a new study reports.

"This discovery is a snapshot of an environment that is very similar to our solar system, but at a much earlier stage of its evolution," study lead author Alexander Bohn, a doctoral student at Leiden University in the Netherlands, said in a statement.

... "Even though astronomers have indirectly detected thousands of planets in our galaxy, only a tiny fraction of these exoplanets have been directly imaged," study co-author Matthew Kenworthy, an associate professor at Leiden University, said in the same statement.



The two giant planets in the TYC 8998-760-1 system are visible as two bright dots in the center (TYC 8998-760-1b) and bottom right (TYC 8998-760-1c) of the frame, noted by arrows. Other bright dots, which are background stars, are visible in the image as well. By taking different images at different times, the team was able to distinguish the planets from the background stars.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Onka]

Great. New planets for us to colonise and mess up. Even if we can't do that surely there's a tipping point or negative impact with all the space junk floating about or being disgarded upon completion or failure of their mission.
Gassho
Onka
st

[Jundo]

Punk is just junk ...

This punk band is made up entirely of robots

The One Love Machine band are a scrappy crew. They have an affinity for punk rock, and members of the band play the bass, drums and flute. Oh, and they're all robots. The band is made up of scrap metal animatronics, created from salvaged junk from scrapyards around Berlin. For creator of the band Kolja Kugler, it's all about giving new life to discarded objects.

https://youtu.be/fLTOqsw_sOA

Gassho, J

STLah

[Onka]

Punk is just junk ...

https://youtu.be/fLTOqsw_sOA

Gassho, J

STLah

Wash your mouth out! hehe. This is the ultimate Industrial band but flutes should be left to Jethro Tull.
Gassho
Onka
st

[Jundo]

NASA astronauts splash down near Florida in a SpaceX Crew Dragon: Bob & Doug Come Home

Just a cool little video for space nerds ... (As to the "America" thing ... and that emblem that strikes me as a bit too close to battleship guns pointed at the sky ... I feel it is an achievement of the world )

https://youtu.be/qDjvuBah3K0

Also this week in Space News ... Perseverence (a Buddhist Virtue) was launched toward Mars this week ... and they had to persevere in the face of "social distancing" and such ...

https://youtu.be/MWD0tDoa3WU

Gassho, J

STLah





Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

We are the universe, right down to our bones ...

Exploding stars created the calcium in our bones and teeth, study says

The calcium in our bones and teeth likely came from stars exploding in supernovas and scattering this mineral across the universe in massive quantities, according to a new study.

We truly are made of star stuff, as famed astronomer Carl Sagan once said.

In fact, half of the calcium in the universe likely came from calcium-rich supernovae. But these explosions have turned out to be incredibly rare events that scientists have had difficulty observing and analyzing, so they weren't sure how the calcium was created.

Explosions and mergers of stars are also known to create other heavy elements, like gold and platinum. But the calcium has presented more of a mystery. That changed when a global team of almost 70 scientists from around the world collaborated after receiving a tip from an amateur astronomer. The study published Wednesday in The Astrophysical Journal.

... Usually, only a small amount of calcium is produced by each star as it burns through its supply of helium. However, when a calcium-rich supernova occurs, massive amounts of calcium are created and released in a matter of seconds.

"The explosion is trying to cool down," said Raffaella Margutti, senior study author and assistant professor of physics and astronomy in Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. "It wants to give away its energy, and calcium emission is an efficient way to do that." ... And SN 2019ehk emitted the most calcium ever observed a single event, the researchers said.

https://us.cnn.com/2020/08/05/health...scn/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Walking through walls ... at least on a quantum scale ...

Physicists watch quantum particles tunnel through solid barriers.

The quantum world is a pretty wild one, where the seemingly impossible happens all the time: Teensy objects separated by miles are tied to one another, and particles can even be in two places at once. But one of the most perplexing quantum superpowers is the movement of particles through seemingly impenetrable barriers.

Now, a team of physicists has devised a simple way to measure the duration of this bizarre phenomenon, called quantum tunneling. And they figured out how long the tunneling takes from start to finish — from the moment a particle enters the barrier, tunnels through and comes out the other side, they reported online July 22 in the journal Nature.

Quantum tunneling is a phenomenon where an atom or a subatomic particle can appear on the opposite side of a barrier that should be impossible for the particle to penetrate. It's as if you were walking and encountered a 10-foot-tall (3 meters) wall extending as far as the eye can see. Without a ladder or Spider-man climbing skills, the wall would make it impossible for you to continue.

However, in the quantum world, it is rare, but possible, for an atom or electron to simply "appear" on the other side, as if a tunnel had been dug through the wall. "Quantum tunneling is one of the most puzzling of quantum phenomena," said study co-author Aephraim Steinberg, co-director of the Quantum Information Science Program at Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. "And it is fantastic that we're now able to actually study it in this way."

...

While the laws of quantum mechanics allow for quantum tunneling, researchers still don't know exactly what happens while a subatomic particle is undergoing the tunneling process. Indeed, some researchers thought that the particle appears instantaneously on the other side of the barrier as if it instantaneously teleported there,

... The researchers prepared approximately 8,000 rubidium atoms, cooled them to a billionth of a degree above absolute zero. The atoms needed to be this temperature, otherwise they would have moved around randomly at high speeds, rather than staying in a small clump. The scientists used a laser to create the magnetic barrier; they focused the laser so that the barrier was 1.3 micrometers (microns) thick, or the thickness of about 2,500 rubidium atoms. (So if you were a foot thick, front to back, this barrier would be the equivalent of about half a mile thick.) Using another laser, the scientists nudged the rubidium atoms toward the barrier, moving them about 0.15 inches per second (4 millimeters/s).

As expected, most of the rubidium atoms bounced off the barrier. However, due to quantum tunneling, about 3% of the atoms penetrated the barrier and appeared on the other side. Based on the precession of those atoms, it took them about 0.6 milliseconds to traverse the barrier.

https://www.livescience.com/quantum-...-measured.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Kyoshin]

I'd like to call everyone's attention to a great show on Netflix called "Connected." It's a wonderful science docuseries from the point of view of how interconnected everything is, and has a lot for a science-interested Zen person to appreciate. It's one of the best shows I've seen in a long time, but the third episode in particular, about dust, really blew my mind.

Gassho
Kyōshin
Satlah

Sent from my moto g(7) power using Tapatalk

[Onka]

I'd like to call everyone's attention to a great show on Netflix called "Connected." It's a wonderful science docuseries from the point of view of how interconnected everything is, and has a lot for a science-interested Zen person to appreciate. It's one of the best shows I've seen in a long time, but the third episode in particular, about dust, really blew my mind.

Gassho
Kyōshin
Satlah

Sent from my moto g(7) power using Tapatalk

Thanks. I watched Pandemic earlier this year. Talk about prophetic.
Gassho
Onka
ST

[Onka]

I'd like to call everyone's attention to a great show on Netflix called "Connected." It's a wonderful science docuseries from the point of view of how interconnected everything is, and has a lot for a science-interested Zen person to appreciate. It's one of the best shows I've seen in a long time, but the third episode in particular, about dust, really blew my mind.

Gassho
Kyōshin
Satlah

Sent from my moto g(7) power using Tapatalk

First episode was excellent. Thanks for the recommendation.
Gassho
Onka
ST

[Doshin]

Thank you Kyoshin. Just watched first episode.

Doshin
St

[Jundo]

Episode 2 on "pooh" is real good too. (That rhymes! )

Gassho, J

STLah

[Onka]

Episode 2 on "pooh" is real good too. (That rhymes! )

Gassho, J

STLah

Yep, absolutely fascinating. I can't believe they left rubbish on the moon!

[Jundo]

Yep, absolutely fascinating. I can't believe they left rubbish on the moon!

There is a very reasonable scientific theory (I won't look for it though) that the galaxies and solar systems are so spread out, like seeds in a garden, simply so we don't go bounding about bringing our germs, violence, golf balls and other trash all over the place. We do seem to bring all it means to be human, for better or worse, wherever we are going so far.



Gassho, J

STLah