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

[Gareth]

Those magnetic strands are how the aliens beam their consciousness from one planet to another

Gassho,
Gareth

Sat today, Lah

[Jundo]

The greatest art is in the cosmos. Magical.

Gassho,
然芸 Nengei
Sat today. LAH.

But I am not kidding, and can save the scientists a lot of work! Just scratches, left by a failure of the universe to use placemats.

Of course, beautiful as it is ...







Gassho, J

STLah

[Nengei]

The greatest art is in the cosmos. Magical.

Gassho,
然芸 Nengei
Sat today. LAH.

[Jundo]

Some great discoveries, yet also great mysteries.

Perhaps they are nothing in particular, no particular function, just scratches on the universal table top ... frayed strands at the bottom of the cosmos' old curtains ...

Hundreds of mysterious strands found at the heart of the Milky Way

The center of our Milky Way galaxy is home to a multitude of intriguing features -- including nearly a thousand mysterious magnetic strands, according to a new telescope image.

The pairs and clusters of strands stretch for nearly 150 light-years in length and are equally spaced. The bizarre structures are a few million years old and vary in appearance. Some of them resemble harp strings, waterfalls or even the rings around Saturn. But the true nature of the filaments remains elusive.

Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, a professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern University, first discovered the strands 35 years ago via radio waves. He determined that the strands were made of cosmic ray electrons that were moving their magnetic fields at near the speed of light. The origin of these strands, however, has remained a mystery.

Now, astronomers were able to find 10 times more strands than Yusef-Zadeh's previous discovery, using the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory MeerKAT telescope.

... The amount of radiation varied from other energetic cosmic events, like supernova remnants, the team's analysis of the strands showed. The scientists think the strands are more likely related to past activity caused by the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way rather than the explosions of stars.

... As the team works to identify each strand, they are still trying to figure out the orderly, equal distance between clusters of strands, the cause of the particle acceleration. or if the strands move over time. "Every time we answer one question, multiple other questions arise," Yusef-Zadeh said. "How do you accelerate electrons at close to the speed of light? One idea is there are some sources at the end of these filaments that are accelerating these particles."
The team also determined that magnetic fields are stronger along the strands.

... Multiple studies about the strands will be published in the future, and scientists hope to uncover how they fit in among the tangle of objects near the center of the Milky Way. "We're hoping to get to the bottom of it, but more observations and theoretical analyses are needed," he said. "A full understanding of complex objects takes time."
https://us.cnn.com/2022/01/26/world/...scn/index.html

and ... maybe it is the cosmic snooze alarm? ...

Unknown space object beaming out radio signals every 18 minutes remains a mystery

While mapping radio waves across the universe, astronomers happened upon a celestial object releasing giant bursts of energy -- and it's unlike anything they've ever seen before.

The spinning space object, spotted in March 2018, beamed out radiation three times per hour. In those moments, it became the brightest source of radio waves viewable from Earth, acting like a celestial lighthouse.

Astronomers think it might be a remnant of a collapsed star, either a dense neutron star or a dead white dwarf star, with a strong magnetic field -- or it could be something else entirely.

... "That was completely unexpected. It was kind of spooky for an astronomer because there's nothing known in the sky that does that. And it's really quite close to us -- about 4,000 light-years away. It's in our galactic backyard." ... This new, incredibly bright object, however, only turned on for about a minute every 18 minutes. The researchers said their observations might match up with the definition of an ultra-long period magnetar. Magnetars usually flare by the second, but this object takes longer. "It's a type of slowly spinning neutron star that has been predicted to exist theoretically," Hurley-Walker said. "But nobody expected to directly detect one like this because we didn't expect them to be so bright. Somehow it's converting magnetic energy to radio waves much more effectively than anything we've seen before."
The researchers will continue to monitor the object to see whether it turns back on, and in the meantime, they are searching for evidence of other similar objects.https://us.cnn.com/2022/01/26/world/...scn/index.html

This is an artist's impression of what the object might look like if it's a magnetar, or an incredibly magnetic neutron star.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

But intelligent AI artificial limbs will likely remaining the better solution for humans ...

Frogs can regrow amputated limbs after being treated with mix of drugs, new research finds

Some unusual creatures have an innate ability to regrow a limb: salamanders, starfish, crabs, lizards and newts.

Such extraordinary powers elude most animals, including humans, although scientists have long sought to understand and replicate them in a quest to regenerate limbs for millions of patient amputees, including diabetics and victims of trauma.

Now, researchers in the United States said Wednesday they were able to trigger the regrowth of an amputated leg in a type of African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis), in what they described as a "step closer to the goal of regenerative medicine."

The technique used by the team of scientists, based at Harvard University's Wyss Institute and Tufts University, involved applying a mix of five drugs to the test frogs' spike-like stump, sealed in with a small silicone dome. The cocktail was only applied for 24 hours, but after 18 months, the limb was almost fully functional. The frogs, which live in water, were able to swim and respond to touch. They also grew several toes but not the webbing between them.

..."An immediate translation of this strategy to humans is unlikely because a regenerative spike does not occur in humans as it does in Xenopus frogs. Yet, this work is exciting because it shows that endogenous regenerative processes can be enhanced by a short application of a drug cocktail," Monaghan said.

... Ashley Seifert, an associate professor of biology at the University of Kentucky who studies animal regeneration but was not involved in the research, said that advancements being made with prosthetics offered more hope than limb regeneration for people with amputated limbs lost through trauma or illness like diabetes.
"Will we one day be able to regenerate a human digit or even a limb? Probably, but how long we need to wait is impossible to predict," Seifert said.

"One step in that direction will be when regenerative biology fully embraces new regenerative models, particularly certain species of mammals. This and comparative studies will help us understand how and why regeneration fails in some contexts and succeeds in others."

https://us.cnn.com/2022/01/26/world/...scn/index.html

Question, what can never be lost even as the 2nd Ancestor loses an arm?

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Particle X ... from the BEGINNING OF TIME! ...

'X particle' from the dawn of time detected inside the Large Hadron Collider

Physicists at the world's largest atom smasher have detected a mysterious, primordial particle from the dawn of time.

About 100 of the short-lived "X" particles — so named because of their unknown structures — were spotted for the first time amid trillions of other particles inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest particle accelerator, located near Geneva at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research).

These X particles, which likely existed in the tiniest fractions of a second after the Big Bang, were detected inside a roiling broth of elementary particles called a quark-gluon plasma, formed in the LHC by smashing together lead ions. By studying the primordial X particles in more detail, scientists hope to build the most accurate picture yet of the origins of the universe. They published their findings Jan. 19 in the journal Physical Review Letters.

... Scientists trace the origins of X particles to just a few millionths of a second after the Big Bang, back when the universe was a superheated trillion-degree plasma soup teeming with quarks and gluons — elementary particles that soon cooled and combined into the more stable protons and neutrons we know today.

Just before this rapid cooling, a tiny fraction of the gluons and the quarks collided, sticking together to form very short-lived X particles. The researchers don't know how elementary particles configure themselves to form the X particle's structure. But if the scientists can figure that out, they will have a much better understanding of the types of particles that were abundant during the universe's earliest moments.

"Theoretically speaking, there are so many quarks and gluons in the plasma that the production of X particles should be enhanced," Lee said. "But people thought it would be too difficult to search for them, because there are so many other particles produced in this quark soup." But the researchers did have a handy clue to work with. Although particle physicists don't know the X particle's structure, they do know that it should have a very distinct decay pattern, because the "daughter" particles it makes should zip off across a very different spread of angles than those produced by other particles. This knowledge enabled the researchers to produce an algorithm that picked out the telltale signs of dozens of X particles.

https://www.livescience.com/x-partic...ted-inside-lhc

Gassho, J

STLAH

[Jundo]

Webb made it! A million mile trek ...

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope reaches new home a million miles from Earth

After a nail-biting 29 days of travel and ultra-precise deployments, the James Webb Space Telescope fired its thrusters one more time Monday to reach its final parking spot a million miles from Earth.

"Webb, welcome home," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement after a five-minute burn added just 3.6 mph to the telescope's speed. "Congratulations to the team for all of their hard work ensuring Webb’s safe arrival at L2 today."

L2 refers to a kind of stable orbit known as a Lagrange point. Technically, Webb is now orbiting the sun and is staying in line with Earth about a million miles away.

"We’re one step closer to uncovering the mysteries of the universe. And I can’t wait to see Webb’s first new views of the universe this summer," Nelson said.

... Every single thing had to work perfectly in order to launch, deploy mirror segments, and reach its final position. ... Mission partners NASA, the European Space Agency, and Canadian Space Agency described the process as "29 days on the edge." Officials before launch said there were potentially 344 points of failure during that period.

Moving forward, engineers will spend about three months aligning Webb's 18 gold-coated hexagonal mirrors to the final configuration.

More here: https://us.cnn.com/2022/01/24/world/...scn/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

More black hole news ... they doth not only taketh, they doth giveth too ...

A black hole fueling star birth has scientists doing a double-take

Black holes are best known for shredding stars, devouring light and acting like massive garbage disposals in space.

In a twist, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that these energetic celestial objects have a nurturing side, too.

Hubble's observation of a dwarf starburst galaxy, called Henize 2-10, revealed a gaseous umbilical cord stretching from a black hole at the center of the galaxy to a stellar nursery where stars are born.

A dwarf starburst galaxy is a small galaxy with an intense amount of star formation.

Star birth requires a dense cloud of gas and dust. The stream of gas provided by the black hole actually triggered a fireworks show of star birth as it interacted with the cloud, which led to a cluster of forming stars.

... It's a rare case of a black hole helping stars to form, rather than tearing them apart. In large galaxies, black holes spew out superheated jets of material that nearly reach the speed of light. Any gas clouds unfortunate enough to be in the way of these jets would become so hot, they wouldn't be able to cool down enough to form stars.
https://us.cnn.com/2022/01/21/world/...scn/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Hole-y cow ... And yet, it is all still a Wholeness ...

40 quintillion stellar-mass black holes are lurking in the universe, new study finds

"Small" black holes are estimated to make up 1% of the universe’s matter.

... Using a new method, outlined Jan. 12 in The Astrophysical Journal, a team of astrophysicists has produced a fresh estimate for the number of stellar-mass black holes — those with masses 5 to 10 times that of the sun — in the universe. And it’s astonishing: 40,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 40 quintillion, stellar-mass black holes populate the observable universe, making up approximately 1% of all normal matter, according to the new estimate.

So how did the scientists arrive at that number? By tracking the evolution of stars in our universe they estimated how often the stars — either on their own, or paired into binary systems — would transform into black holes, said first author Alex Sicilia, an astrophysicist at the International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy.

"This is one of the first, and one of the most robust, ab initio [ground up] computation[s] of the stellar black hole mass function across cosmic history," Sicilia said in a statement.

,,, Astrophysicists hope to use the new estimate to investigate some perplexing questions that arise from observations of the very early universe — for instance, how the early universe became so quickly populated by supermassive black holes — often with masses millions, or even billions, of times greater than the stellar-mass holes the researchers examined in this study — so soon after the Big Bang.

Because these gigantic black holes came from the merging of smaller, stellar-mass black holes — or black hole 'seeds' — the researchers hope that a better understanding of how small black holes formed in the early universe could help them to unearth the origins of their supermassive cousins.

https://www.livescience.com/research...ny-black-holes

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Oh, we are spared again! Otherwise, a Brontosaur would be typing these words ...

A massive asteroid will zip past Earth next week. Here's how to spot it.

The space rock is more than twice as massive as the Empire State Building.

The stony asteroid, known as (7482) 1994 PC1, will pass at its closest on Jan. 18 at 4:51 p.m. EST (2151 GMT), traveling at 43,754 mph (70,415 km/h) and hurtling past Earth at a distance of 0.01324 astronomical units — 1.2 million miles ( nearly 2 million kilometers), according to NASA JPL-Caltech's Solar System Dynamics (SSD).
https://www.livescience.com/asteroid...s-january-2022

Reminds me of this movie I watched this week which, while not the greatest movie ever, was just so true ...

https://youtu.be/RbIxYm3mKzI

Gassho, J

STLah

[Tomás ESP]

Another Webb milestone ...



Check out the unfolding from the 1:00 mark in the video ...

https://youtu.be/XlUjCbfmW18

Gassho, J

STLah

Absolutely mind-blowing. I am amazed at what humanity is capable of achieving when we coordinate properly

Gassho, Tomás
Sat&LaH

[Jundo]

In a medical first, a man with terminal heart disease gets a transplant of genetically modified pig heart

A 57-year-old Maryland man is doing well three days after receiving a genetically modified pig heart in a first-of-its-kind transplant surgery, University of Maryland Medicine said in a news release Monday.

David Bennett had terminal heart disease, and the pig heart was "the only currently available option," according to the release. Bennett was deemed ineligible for a conventional heart transplant or an artificial heart pump after reviews of his medical records.

... Three genes that are responsible for rejection of pig organs by human immune systems were removed from the donor pig, and one gene was taken out to prevent excessive pig heart tissue growth. Six human genes responsible for immune acceptance were inserted.

Bennett's doctors will need to monitor him for days to weeks to see whether the transplant works to provide lifesaving benefits. He'll be monitored for immune system problems or other complications.

"There are simply not enough donor human hearts available to meet the long list of potential recipients," surgeon Dr. Bartley P. Griffith said in a statement. "We are proceeding cautiously, but we are also optimistic that this first-in-the-world surgery will provide an important new option for patients in the future."

Pig heart valves have been transplanted into humans for many years.

In October, surgeons successfully tested the transplant of a genetically modified pig kidney into a woman in New York who was brain-dead.

https://us.cnn.com/2022/01/10/health...ant/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Another Webb milestone ...

After decades of planning, NASA's $10 billion space telescope has 'taken its final form'

All systems are go for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which deployed its full gold-plated, sunflower-shaped mirror display Saturday.

Now, the $10 billion successor to the Hubble telescope has five months of alignment and calibration procedures before it is expected to start sending images back to Earth, the space agency said Saturday.

"Two weeks after launch, @NASAWebb has hit its next biggest milestone: the mirrors have completed deployment and the next-generation telescope has taken its final form," NASA announced Saturday.

The news marked the completion of a "remarkable feat," said Gregory Robinson, NASA's Webb program director, in a statement.

Check out the unfolding from the 1:00 mark in the video ...

https://youtu.be/XlUjCbfmW18

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Even the stars are not forever ...

Giant dying star explodes as scientists watch in real time — a first for astronomy

Ground-based telescopes provided the first real-time look at the death throes of a red supergiant star. While these aren't the brightest or most massive stars, they are the largest in terms of volume.
...
... the star at the heart of this new research, located in the NGC 5731 galaxy about 120 million light-years away from Earth, was 10 times more massive than the sun before it exploded.

Before they go out in a blaze of glory, some stars experience violent eruptions or release glowing hot layers of gas. Until astronomers witnessed this event, they believed that red supergiants were relatively quiet before exploding into a supernova or collapsing into a dense neutron star. Instead, scientists watched the star self-destruct in dramatic fashion before collapsing in a type II supernova. This star death is the rapid collapse and violent explosion of a massive star after it has burned through the hydrogen, helium and other elements in its core.

All that remains is the star's iron, but iron can't fuse so the star will run out of energy. When that happens, the iron collapses and causes the supernova. A study detailing these findings published Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal.

"This is a breakthrough in our understanding of what massive stars do moments before they die," said lead study author Wynn Jacobson-Galán, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at University of California, Berkeley, in a statement.

https://us.cnn.com/2022/01/06/world/...scn/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

We are even in the air.

DNA can now be pulled from the very air we breathe. It could help track endangered animals

Scientists are now able to collect and analyze DNA pulled from thin air, and the groundbreaking new techniques used to do it could transform the way endangered animals and natural ecosystems are studied and protected.

Two groups of researchers working independently, one based in Denmark and the other in the UK and Canada, tested whether airborne DNA could be used to detect different animal species by collecting samples at Copenhagen Zoo in Denmark and Hamerton Zoo Park in the UK.

All living organisms, including humans, leach genetic material known as eDNA into the environment when they excrete waste, bleed, and shed skin or fur. In recent years, conservation scientists have sequenced waterborne eDNA to track certain species, such as the UK's great crested newt population, in aquatic environments.
However, monitoring airborne eDNA was more of a challenge because it's more diluted in air than it is in water.

...

"In just 40 samples, we detected 49 species spanning mammal, bird, amphibian, reptile and fish," Bohmann said. "In the Rainforest House (at the Copenhagen Zoo) we even detected the guppies in the pond, the two-toed sloth and the boa. When sampling air in just one outdoor site, we detected many of the animals with access to an outdoor enclosure in that part of the zoo, for example kea, ostrich and rhino."
https://us.cnn.com/2022/01/06/europe...scn/index.html

It reminds me of this old calculation ...

The story goes that in 44 BC in Rome, Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of his own senators, crumpling to the floor with a final gasp. This last breath contained around 25 sextillion (that’s 25 followed by 21 zeroes) air molecules, which would have spread around the globe within a couple of years. A breath seems like such a small thing compared to the Earth’s atmosphere, but remarkably, if you do the math, you’ll find that roughly one molecule of Caesar’s air will appear in your next breath.

And it doesn’t stop there. In the same way, you might currently be inhaling Cleopatra’s perfume, German mustard gas and even particles exhaled by dinosaurs.

...

At standard room temperature and pressure, you’re breathing in roughly 25 sextillion molecules every time you take a breath. That’s 25 with 21 zeroes behind it. That’s a gargantuan number! If you took every human being alive today on the planet—all 7 billion of us—and imagined each one having 7 billion descendants, 7 billion times 7 billion, you’d still be 500 times short of that number. And you inhale that every time you take a breath.

When Caesar exhaled that last breath, all those molecules got spread across the Earth, first in a band of prevailing winds around the same latitude as Italy, then over the northern hemisphere. In the course of about two years, given air currents and circulation, it would probably have spread across the entire world.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/s...reath-sam-kean

Gassho, J

STLah