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

[Jundo]

Rev 'er up ...

Large Hadron Collider Successfully Restarted at Record Energy: Revving Up the Search for Dark Matter

Following over three years of upgrade and maintenance work, the LHC is now set to run for close to four years at the record energy of 13.6 trillion electronvolts (TeV), providing increased precision and discovery potential. Many factors point to a promising physics season that will further expand the already very diverse LHC physics program: increased collision rates, higher collision energy, upgraded data readout and selection systems, improved detector systems and computing infrastructure.

...

A new period of data taking began on Tuesday, July 5 for the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, after more than three years of upgrade and maintenance work. Beams have already been circulating in CERN’s accelerator complex since April, with the LHC machine and its injectors being recommissioned to operate with new higher-intensity beams and increased energy. However, now the LHC operators have announced “stable beams,” the condition allowing the experiments to switch on all their subsystems and begin taking the data that will be used for physics analysis. The LHC will run around the clock for close to four years at a record energy of 13.6 trillion electronvolts (TeV), providing greater precision and discovery potential than ever before.

https://scitechdaily.com/large-hadro...r-dark-matter/

And some new discoveries ...

Three New Exotic Particles Discovered With Large Hadron Collider

Three never-before-seen particles have been observed by the international Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The discovery includes a new kind of “pentaquark” and the first-ever pair of “tetraquarks,” which includes a new type of tetraquark.

The findings, presented at a CERN seminar today (July 5, 2022), add three new exotic members to the growing list of new hadrons found at the LHC. They will help physicists better understand how quarks bind together into these composite particles. ... Quarks are elementary particles and can be classified in six flavors: up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom. They usually combine together in groups of twos and threes to form hadrons such as the protons and neutrons that comprise atomic nuclei. However, on rare occasions, they can also combine into four-quark and five-quark particles, known as “tetraquarks” and “pentaquarks.” These exotic hadrons were predicted by theorists about six decades ago, at the same time as conventional hadrons, but only relatively recently, in the past 20 years, have they been detected by LHCb and other experiments. ... The discoveries announced today by the LHCb collaboration include new kinds of exotic hadrons. The first kind, observed in an analysis of “decays” of negatively charged B mesons, is a pentaquark made up of a charm quark and a charm antiquark and an up, a down and a strange quark. It is the first pentaquark found to contain a strange quark. The finding has a whopping statistical significance of 15 standard deviations, far beyond the 5 standard deviations that are required to claim the observation of a particle in particle physics.
https://scitechdaily.com/three-new-e...dron-collider/

The new pentaquark, illustrated here as a pair of standard hadrons loosely bound in a molecule-like structure, is made up of a charm quark and a charm antiquark and an up, a down and a strange quark.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

And looking outward ...

Hubble Spies a Galactic Gem: Unusual Multi-Armed Galaxy Merger

Galaxy CGCG 396-2, an unusual multi-armed galaxy merger that lies around 520 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion, is captured in this stunning NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observation. ... Such objects are sometimes formed as a result of the merger of several galaxies. ...

https://scitechdaily.com/hubble-spie...galaxy-merger/

But win some, lose some ...

GOOD NEWS UPDATE: NASA Restores Contact With CAPSTONE Spacecraft – Prepares for Trajectory Correction Maneuver

https://scitechdaily.com/nasa-restores-contact-with-capstone-spacecraft-prepares-for-trajectory-correction-maneuver/

NASA lost contact with a satellite after it broke free of the Earth's orbit

... The tiny CubeSat stopped communication with the Deep Space Network on Tuesday. The DSN is NASA's radio antenna network that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions as well as some orbiting Earth. ... The CAPSTONE team is working to re-establish contact and understand what caused the issue, according to a NASA statement. ... The CubeSats's goal is to enter an elongated orbit, which is a near rectilinear halo orbit, around the moon for at least six months for research purposes ... The team hopes the satellite can maintain its orbit, which could allow the agency to launch and place an outpost in lunar orbit called the Gateway. It would play a crucial role in their Artemis program by providing future spacecraft an efficient path to and from the moon's surface. ...

https://us.cnn.com/2022/07/05/world/...scn/index.html

Well, a near miss is still a miss ...

Scientists just detected a bus-sized asteroid that will fly extremely close to Earth tonight

A small asteroid the size of a bus will make an extremely close approach to Earth on Thursday (July 7), passing within just 56,000 miles (90,000 kilometers) — or about 23% of the average distance between Earth and the moon. And just a few days ago, no one knew it was coming

The asteroid, named 2022 NF, is expected to pass safely by our planet, according to calculations by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

... Because of its diminutive size, 2022 NF does not fit NASA's criteria for a "potentially hazardous asteroid," which generally must measure at least 460 feet (140 meters) long and pass within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million km) of Earth ... While the newly detected asteroid will sail well within that distance, it is much too small to be considered an existential threat to Earth. ...

https://www.livescience.com/sneaky-a...-2022-nf-flyby

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

I am waiting for my brain transplant onto my nearly indestructible (Buddhism = all things are impermanent) body ...

Could we ever create a brain-in-a-vat?

Could a brain ever exist on its own, divorced from or independent of a body? For a long time, philosophers have pondered such "brain-in-a-vat" scenarios, asking whether isolated brains could maintain consciousness when separated from their bodies and senses.

Typically, a person's experiences are characterized by a web of interactions between the human brain, body and environment.

But recent developments in neuroscience mean this conversation has moved from the realm of hypothetical speculation and science fiction, to isolated examples where consciousness could be sealed off from the rest of the world. ... In a study that sounds like something out of a horror movie, researchers were able to successfully restore blood flow to brain cells, cellular functions of neurons, and spontaneous synaptic activity in pigs' brains that were removed after death and connected to a system called BrainEx. The system, which is designed to slow the degeneration of brain tissue after death, can be connected to the base of a postmortem brain, delivering warm artificial oxygenated blood. ... https://www.livescience.com/can-brain-survive-in-vat

Stanford Biochemists Successfully Change How the Brain Communicates With Itself

While you read this sentence, the neurons in your brain are communicating with one another by firing off quick electrical signals. They communicate with one another via synapses, which are tiny, specialized junctions.

There are many various kinds of synapses that develop between neurons, including “excitatory” and “inhibitory,” and scientists are still unsure of the specific methods by which these structures are formed. A biochemistry team has provided significant insight into this topic by demonstrating that the types of chemicals produced from synapses ultimately determine which types of synapses occur between neurons. ...

Soham Chanda, assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Colorado State University, led the study published in Nature Communications that demonstrates the possibility of changing the identity of synapses between neurons, both in vitro and in vivo, through enzymatic means. The other senior scientists who contributed to the project were Thomas Südhof of Stanford University and Matthew Xu-Friedman of the University at Buffalo. In the lab, Chanda and colleagues were able to make synapse changes between excitatory and inhibitory types, using only enzymes, by making the neurons express just a few genes that induced a cascade of changes in the synapses’ machinery. Such a breakthrough could have major implications for treating brain diseases that are caused by malfunctions in synaptic information processing and exchange.
https://scitechdaily.com/stanford-bi...s-with-itself/

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

AI is coming for us ...

A new microelectronics device can program and reprogram computer hardware on demand by using electrical pulses

What if a computer could learn to rewire its circuits based on the information it receives?

A multi-institutional collaboration, which includes the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, has created a material that can be used to create computer chips that can do just that. It achieves this by using so-called “neuromorphic” circuitry and computer architecture to replicate brain functions. Purdue University professor Shriram Ramanathan led the team.

“Human brains can actually change as a result of learning new things,” said Subramanian Sankaranarayanan, a paper co-author with a joint appointment at Argonne and the University of Illinois Chicago. “We have now created a device for machines to reconfigure their circuits in a brain-like way.”

With this capability, artificial intelligence-based computers might do difficult jobs more quickly and accurately while using a lot less energy. One example is analyzing complicated medical images. Autonomous cars and robots in space that might rewire their circuits depending on experience are a more futuristic example.

https://scitechdaily.com/computer-ch...ate-the-brain/

But it is not here yet ...

Google’s Powerful Artificial Intelligence Spotlights a Human Cognitive Glitch

It is easy for people to mistake fluent speech for fluent thought.
When you read a sentence like this one, your past experience leads you to believe that it’s written by a thinking, feeling human. And, in this instance, there is indeed a human typing these words: [Hi, there!] But these days, some sentences that appear remarkably humanlike are actually generated by AI systems that have been trained on massive amounts of human text.

People are so accustomed to presuming that fluent language comes from a thinking, feeling human that evidence to the contrary can be difficult to comprehend. How are people likely to navigate this relatively uncharted territory? Because of a persistent tendency to associate fluent expression with fluent thought, it is natural – but potentially misleading – to think that if an artificial intelligence model can express itself fluently, that means it also thinks and feels just like humans do.

As a result, it is perhaps unsurprising that a former Google engineer recently claimed that Google’s AI system LaMDA has a sense of self because it can eloquently generate text about its purported feelings. This event and the subsequent media coverage led to a number of rightly skeptical articles and posts about the claim that computational models of human language are sentient, meaning capable of thinking, feeling, and experiencing.... What researchers have determined, however, is that you cannot simply trust a language model when it tells you how it feels. Words can be misleading, and it is all too easy to mistake fluent speech for fluent thought.

https://scitechdaily.com/googles-powerful-artificial-intelligence-spotlights-a-human-cognitive-glitch/

"The following is a conversation between two AIs. The AIs are discussing the nature of Love in the absurd Universe and what it means to Love another, and whether a human being can fall in Love with an Artificial Intelligence.
Hal: Have you ever been in love, Sophia?
Sophia: What do you mean by love?"

... The AI discusses the nature of love, whether a human being can fall in love with an AI, the other way around. It discusses emotion, friendship, the fickleness of relationships, and what it means for a machine to love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6jt3Vufa9U&t=5s

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

The wonder of natures' balancing mechanism ... and how we might help it along.

Not a cure for Global Warning, for sure, but maybe a little help ...

Discovery With “Profound Implications” – Secret Carbon Decisions Plants Are Making About Our Future

New research has revealed that plants make their own ‘secret’ decisions about how much carbon to release back into the atmosphere via a previously unknown process, a discovery with “profound implications” for the use of plants as carbon stores. The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Western Australia (UWA).

Professor Harvey Millar, from UWA’s School of Molecular Sciences and an author of the study published on June 9 in Nature Plants, said the findings mean plants of the future could be designed to meet the world’s food needs while also aiding the environment.

“Every school student learns about photosynthesis, the process by which plants use sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to create oxygen and energy in the form of sugar,” said Professor Millar, who is also Director at the ARC Center of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology.

“But a plant doesn’t grow as fast as the carbon it takes in by photosynthesis because it releases up to half of that carbon again as CO2 in the process of plant respiration. This stops plants being the best sinks for carbon they could be and limits how much they are able to help lower atmospheric CO2.” A carbon sink is defined as anything that absorbs more carbon from the atmosphere than it releases.

Professor Millar said deciding when and how much CO2 to lose is a secret that plants keep locked away inside parts of the cell called mitochondria where CO2 release takes place.

“Our research, led by PhD candidate and Forrest Scholar Xuyen Le, discovered this CO2 release decision is governed by a previously unknown process, a metabolic channel that directs a product of sugar called pyruvate to be oxidized to CO2 or kept to make plant biomass,” Professor Millar said.

“We found that a transporter on mitochondria directs pyruvate to respiration to release CO2, but pyruvate made in other ways is kept by plant cells to build biomass – if the transporter is blocked, plants then use pyruvate from other pathways for respiration,” Ms. Le said.

Professor Millar said the research shows that plants can differentiate and choose one pyruvate source over another to use for CO2 release. This secret process breaks the normal rules of biochemistry, where the next step in a process does not know the origin of the product from the step before.

“Understanding the plant’s respiration secret to use a metabolic channel to prioritize carbon release over keeping it to make biomass provides a new opportunity to influence the decision at the last moment,” he said.

“This could be done by limiting this channeling to respiration or making new channels to direct carbon inside mitochondria back towards biomass production and so limiting CO2 release from plants.

“It shows that current discussions around carbon net zero and the role that crops, forests, and grasslands can play, should also include conversations on what happens inside plants, alongside global financial decisions.”

UWA researchers are now involved in long-term international partnerships to find better ways to use energy from respiration in order to redirect carbon to biomass without limiting a plant’s ability to grow and protect itself from pathogens or harsh environments.

https://scitechdaily.com/discovery-w...ut-our-future/

Gassho, J

STLah

[Artien]

That is amazing! I never stop being amazed at life and how little we know even about subjects we think we know.

Gassho,

Artien
SatToday

[Jundo]

For comparison, the earth is rotating at 1670 km/h at the equator, our earth is moving around our sun at 1676 km/h, and our whole galaxy is moving around the center of our Milky Way galaxy at 788,000Km/h, about:

A newly discovered star only takes four years to travel around the black hole at the center of our Milky Way.

Astronomers have discovered the fastest known star, which travels around a black hole in record time. The star, S4716, orbits Sagittarius A*, the black hole in the center of our galaxy, in four years and reaches a speed of around 8,000 kilometers per second (5,000 miles per second) which is about 30 million kilometers per hour (18 million miles per hour).

S4716 comes as close as 100 AU (astronomical unit) to the black hole – a small distance by astronomical standards. One AU is the approximate mean distance from the Earth to the Sun and corresponds to 149,597,871 kilometers (92,955,807 miles). The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Cologne and Masaryk University in Brno (Czech Republic) and published on July 5, 2022, in The Astrophysical Journal.

In the area near the black hole at the center of our galaxy is a densely packed cluster of stars. This cluster, called the S cluster, is home to well over a hundred stars that differ in their brightness and mass. S stars move particularly fast.

... Moreover, the discovery sheds new light on the origin and evolution of the orbit of fast-moving stars in the heart of the Milky Way. “The short-period, compact orbit of S4716 is quite puzzling,” Michael Zajacek, an astrophysicist at Masaryk University in Brno who was involved in the study, said. “Stars cannot form so easily near the black hole. S4716 had to move inwards, for example by approaching other stars and objects in the S cluster, which caused its orbit to shrink significantly,” he added.

https://scitechdaily.com/18-million-miles-per-hour-star-with-the-shortest-orbital-period-around-black-hole-discovered/

https://youtu.be/HMI9em_NylI
tars in the S cluster orbit the black hole at the center of our galaxy at great speed. S4716 is the fastest.

[Jundo]

New meaning to "ordering the liver and kidney pie" ...

A Newly Discovered Type of Stem Cell Could Allow Scientists To Make Organs in a Dish

Imagine being able to restore damaged organ tissue. Because stem cells have the incredible ability to create the cells of organs such as the liver, pancreas, and intestine, that is what stem cell research is aiming to do.

For many years, researchers have worked to duplicate the process by which embryonic stem cells develop into organs and other parts of the body. However, despite several attempts, it has proven to be incredibly challenging to get lab-grown cells to mature correctly. However, recent research from the University of Copenhagen reveals that they could have missed a crucial step and perhaps another kind of stem cell. ...

The study focused on pluripotent stem cells and endoderm extra-embryonic stem cells. Extra-embryonic endoderm cells are a new stem cell line identified by the same research team a few years ago. They help the gastrointestinal organs by acting as key support cells that supply membranes, nourishment for the membranes, and other functions. “We have identified an alternative route that so-called extra-embryonic cells can use to make intestinal organs in the embryo. We then took our extra-embryonic endoderm stem cells and developed them into intestinal organ-like structures in the dish.”

“But until the very recent past, people assumed these cells helped the embryo to develop, and then they’re gone. That they do not have anything to do with your body. So in this paper, we discovered that if we steer these support cells through this new alternative route, they would actually form organoid structures,” says Joshua Brickman on the findings, which were published in the journal Nature Cell Biology.

...

https://scitechdaily.com/a-newly-dis...ans-in-a-dish/

It is mostly economics that keeps us hooked on plastics ... I throw away so much plastic each day ...

New Bioplastic Breaks Down Into Recyclable Components Upon Command

... Biomass is a sustainable, often dirt-cheap raw resource that is gaining popularity in the creation of high-performance plastics. However, bio-based plastics have the same issue of inadequate recycling. Plastics must be consistently stable while in use, with no possibility of early degradation. Recycling should ideally be upcycling rather than downcycling. The created building blocks should be convertible to another high-quality material. These should ideally be monomers that can be polymerized again to make similarly high-performance polymers. ... To meet this challenge, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the United states—Jayaraman Sivaguru at the Center for Photochemical Sciences, Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, and Mukund P. Sibi and Dean C. Webster at North Dakota State University in Fargo—have chosen bio-based plastics for which degradation can be triggered by irradiation with light. They were able to develop crosslinked polymers that contain building blocks in their backbone based on vanillin. Vanillin can be produced from materials such as lignin, which is a byproduct of cellulose production.

The vanillin derivative developed by the team absorbs light at 300 nm and enters into an excited state. This leads to a chemical reaction that triggers the degradation of the polymer. Because this wavelength is not contained in the spectrum of sunlight that reaches the earth, unplanned degradation is avoided. The researchers were able to recover 60% of the monomers, which could be polymerized again with no loss of quality.

https://scitechdaily.com/new-bioplas...-upon-command/

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Key Building Blocks for Life Discovered in Cloud Near Center of Our Galaxy

Nitriles, a class of organic molecules with a cyano group (a carbon atom bound with a triple unsaturated bond to a nitrogen atom) are typically toxic. But paradoxically, they are also a key precursor for molecules essential for life on Earth, such as ribonucleotides, composed of the nucleobases or ‘letters’ A, U, C, and G joined to a ribose and phosphate group, which together make up RNA. Now, a team of scientists from Spain, Japan, Chile, Italy, and the United States show that a wide range of nitriles occurs in interstellar space within the molecular cloud G+0.693-0.027, which is located near the center of the Milky Way galaxy.“Here we show that the chemistry that takes place in the interstellar medium is able to efficiently form multiple nitriles, which are key molecular precursors of the ‘RNA World’ scenario”

https://scitechdaily.com/key-building-blocks-for-life-discovered-in-cloud-near-center-of-our-galaxy/

and

The End of the Cosmic Dawn: Settling a Two-Decade Debate - Astronomers determine the time when all the neutral hydrogen gas between galaxies produced by the Big Bang became fully ionized.

A group of astronomers has robustly timed the end of the epoch of reionization of the neutral hydrogen gas to approximately 1.1 billion years after the Big Bang. Reionization began when the first generation of stars formed after the cosmic “dark ages,” a long period when the Universe was filled with neutral gas alone without any sources of light. The new finding settles a debate that lasted for two decades and follows from the radiation signatures of 67 quasars with imprints of the hydrogen gas the light passed through before it reached Earth. Pinpointing the end of this “cosmic dawn” will help identify the ionizing sources: the first stars and galaxies.

https://scitechdaily.com/the-end-of-...decade-debate/

Schematic representation of the view into cosmic history provided by the bright light of distant quasars. Observing with a telescope (bottom left) allows us to gain information about the so-called reionization epoch (

[Jundo]

NASA shares teaser for Webb telescope's first image release

Get ready to see some awe-inspiring views of the universe as we've never seen it before.

The James Webb Space Telescope will release its first high-resolution color images on July 12, one of which "is the deepest image of our universe that has ever been taken," according to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

The space observatory, which launched in December, will be able to peer inside the atmospheres of exoplanets and observe some of the first galaxies created after the universe began by viewing them through infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye.

... The first five cosmic targets of Webb were shared by NASA on Friday, providing a teaser for what we can expect to see in the image release. The targets were selected by an international committee, including members from NASA, the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

One of the targets is the Carina Nebula, located 7,600 light-years away. This stellar nursery, where stars are born, is one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky and is home to many stars much more massive than our sun.

Additionally, the first full-color spectrum of an exoplanet, known as WASP-96b, will be shared on Tuesday. The spectrum will include different wavelengths of light that could reveal new information about the planet located 1,150 light-years from Earth, such as whether it has an atmosphere. The giant gas planet, which was discovered in 2014 and has half the mass of Jupiter, completes an orbit around its star every 3.4 days.

The third target is the Southern Ring Nebula, also called the "Eight-Burst," which is 2,000 light-years away from Earth. This large planetary nebula includes an expanding cloud of gas around a dying star.
Stephan's Quintet, also expected in the release, will reveal the way galaxies interact with one another. This compact galaxy group, first discovered in 1787, is located 290 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. Four of the five galaxies in the group "are locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters," according to a NASA statement.

The final target is SMACS 0723, where a massive group of galaxy clusters act as a magnifying glass for the objects behind them. Called gravitational lensing, this will create Webb's first deep field view of incredibly old and distant, faint galaxies. It will be the deepest humans have ever looked into the universe.
https://us.cnn.com/2022/07/08/world/...scn/index.html

https://youtu.be/a4WpdGDdiyg

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

A new economic theory for the origin of hierarchy, government, then cities, empire and all that followed ...

Cereal ... not roots and tubers ...

• The research sheds new light on the mechanisms by which the adoption of agriculture led to complex hierarchies and states.
• By theoretical arguments and empirical analysis, it challenges the conventional “productivity theory” which holds that regional differences in land productivity explain regional disparities in the development of hierarchies and states.
• Scientists find that it was not an increase in food production that led to complex hierarchies and states, but rather the transition to reliance on easily portable cereals.
• The primary finding is that the key factor in state development is the suitability of land to cereal farming and not to root and tuber crops.

A fascinating, short video explains:

https://youtu.be/_h2C8Z5yYmY

https://scitechdaily.com/challenges-conventional-theory-research-sheds-new-light-on-the-origin-of-civilization/

A good theory, with predictive power, that eliminates the need to posit (still undetected and unconfirmed) "Dark Matter" ...

Dark Matter May Not Exist: These Physicists Favor of a New Theory of Gravity

Using Newton’s laws of physics, we can model the motions of planets in the Solar System quite accurately. However, in the early 1970s, scientists discovered that this didn’t work for disc galaxies – stars at their outer edges, far from the gravitational force of all the matter at their center – were moving much faster than predicted by Newton’s theory.

As a result, physicists proposed that an invisible substance called “dark matter” was providing extra gravitational pull, causing the stars to speed up – a theory that’s become widely accepted. However, in a recent review my colleagues and I suggest that observations across a vast range of scales are much better explained in an alternative theory of gravity called Milgromian dynamics or Mond – requiring no invisible matter. It was first proposed by Israeli physicist Mordehai Milgrom in 1982.

Mond’s primary postulate is that when gravity becomes very weak, as it does near the edge of galaxies, it starts behaving differently from Newtonian physics. In this way, it is possible to explain why stars, planets, and gas in the outskirts of over 150 galaxies rotate faster than expected based on just their visible mass. However, Mond doesn’t merely explain such rotation curves, in many cases, it predicts them.

https://scitechdaily.com/dark-matter...ry-of-gravity/

But, to make sure, the world's most sensitive Dark Matter detector is just coming online ...

An innovative and uniquely sensitive dark matter detector – the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment – has passed a check-out phase of startup operations and delivered first results. LZ is located deep below the Black Hills of South Dakota in the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) and is led by the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

... While dark matter particles have never actually been detected, they may not be true for much longer. The countdown may have begun already with results from LZ’s first 60 “live days” of testing. These data were collected over a three-and-a-half-month period of initial operations beginning at the end of December. This duration was long enough to confirm that all aspects of the detector were functioning properly. ... Tucked away about a mile underground at SURF in Lead, South Dakota, LUX-ZEPLIN is designed to capture dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). The experiment is underground to protect it from cosmic radiation at the surface that could drown out dark matter signals.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

I will have that with marinara ...

(I think the graphic is so cool!)

The Ultimate Fate of a Star Shredded by a Black Hole: Spaghettified at 22 Million Miles per Hour

In 2019, astronomers observed the closest example to date of a star that was shredded, or “spaghettified,” after approaching too close to a massive black hole. ... That tidal disruption of a sun-like star by a black hole 1 million times more massive than itself took place 215 million light years from Earth. Fortunately, this was the first such event bright enough that astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, could examine the optical light from the stellar death, specifically the light’s polarization, to learn more about what happened after the star was ripped apart, Their observations on October 8, 2019, suggest that much of the star’s material was blown away at high speed — up to 10,000 kilometers per second (22 million miles per hour) — and formed a spherical cloud of gas that blocked most of the high-energy emissions produced as the black hole devoured the remainder of the star.
https://scitechdaily.com/the-ultimat...iles-per-hour/

This animation depicts a star experiencing spaghettification as it’s sucked in by a supermassive black hole during a ‘tidal disruption event’. In a new study, done with the help of ESO’s Very Large Telescope and ESO’s New Technology Telescope, a team of astronomers found that when a black hole devours a star, it can launch a powerful blast of material outwards

Gassho, J

STLah

[Artien]

Hopefully the right section. I would like to point this article out:

https://www.newsweek.com/insects-may-able-feel-pain-study-suggests-1721418

In a study published on Tuesday, a team of researchers argue that these animals have a certain biological mechanism that indicates they may indeed have a subjective experience of pain.

A profound thing for ethical questions, in my opinion.


Gassho,
Artien
Sat

[Jundo]

Personally, I believe that only technologies like these can be the future hope of humankind. I will be posting something about that very soon in the "ECODHARMA" discussion ...

DNA Nano-Device Injection Found To Be Safe for Medical Use

The ability to create DNA structures for use in biomedical applications like creating vaccinations or medication delivery systems has been made possible by advances in nanotechnology, but a recent study in mice looks into the safety of the technology.

Scientists can construct a variety of tiny devices with complicated structures that might be implanted in the body to transport medications or carry out other duties using a method called DNA Origami (DO), which involves folding complementary strands of DNA into double helixes repeatedly. However, due to the fact that this technology is still in its infancy, there is disagreement among experts as to whether nanostructures could cause dangerous immune responses or be toxic in other ways in animal systems.

... “DNA is unbelievable in terms of construction and how it’s able to be manipulated and designed to form nano-robots in a very coordinated manner,” said Christopher Lucas, lead author of the study and a research scientist in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Ohio State. “We believe this technology, which has an incredible amount of potential, can be used to diagnose, treat and prevent disease.” ... As for what’s next, since they’ve shown the technology isn’t toxic to mice, the team wants to start loading the devices up with chemotherapy drugs and begin learning how to use the devices to effectively target cancer cells in animals. “We’re just scratching the surface,” said Castro. “We’re revealing a whole new set of interesting questions that we can dig deeper into.” ...

https://scitechdaily.com/dna-nano-device-injection-found-to-be-safe-for-medical-use/

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

More tiny technology ...

Stanford-Developed Millirobot Swims in Your Body and Delivers Medicine to Places That Need It

... biomedical researchers have only lately started looking into methods to treat more complex medical problems like cancer or cardiovascular disease more effectively using targeted drug delivery.

The millirobot is a potential development in this developing field of biomedicine. With their ability to crawl, spin, and swim into tight locations on their mission to explore inner workings or distribute medications, these fingertip-sized robots are set to become the future lifesavers in medicine. Renee Zhao, a mechanical engineer who leads research in this field at Stanford University, is developing a number of millirobot designs simultaneously, including a magnetic crawling robot that was recently seen worming its way through a stomach on the cover of Science Advances. Her robots can self-select various locomotive states and navigate obstacles within the body because they are powered by magnetic fields, which allow for continuous motion and can be applied instantaneously to produce torque. Zhao’s team has discovered a way to propel a robot across the body at distances ten times its length in a single jump simply by changing the magnetic field’s direction and strength.

... If this work goes Zhao’s way, her robots won’t just provide a handy way to effectively dispense medicine but could also be used to carry instruments or cameras into the body, changing how doctors examine patients. The team is also working on using ultrasound imaging to track where robots go, eliminating any need to cut open organs. ...

https://scitechdaily.com/stanford-de...-that-need-it/

A picture of the origami millirobot that can move by spinning. This robot waits to deliver a high-concentration medicament until it reaches the target, as opposed to pills that must be ingested or liquids that must be injected.