Category: Science

In a groundbreaking discovery, a telescope surpassing the size of Earth has detected a plasma rope in the vastness of the Universe. Utilizing a network of radio telescopes both on Earth and in space, astronomers have unveiled the most intricate view ever captured of a plasma jet emanating from a supermassive black hole situated at the center of a remote galaxy.

The jet originates from the heart of a distant blazar known as 3C 279, hurtling through space at nearly the speed of light and revealing intricate, twisted patterns near its source. Surprisingly, these patterns challenge the conventional theory that has stood for four decades, attempting to explain the formation and evolution of such jets over time.

The Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, played a pivotal role in these observations. The institute facilitated the combination of data from all participating telescopes, creating a virtual telescope with an effective diameter of approximately 100,000 kilometers.

Blazars, a subclass of active galactic nuclei, are the brightest and most powerful sources of electromagnetic radiation in the cosmos. They consist of galaxies with a central supermassive black hole accreting matter from a surrounding disk. About 10% of active galactic nuclei, classified as quasars, generate relativistic plasma jets. Blazars specifically belong to a small fraction of quasars where these jets point almost directly at the observer.

Recently, a team of researchers, including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, imaged the innermost region of the jet in the blazar 3C 279 with unprecedented angular resolution. They detected remarkably regular helical filaments, suggesting a need for a reevaluation of the theoretical models used thus far to explain the processes behind jet production in active galaxies.

Antonio Fuentes, a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Granada, Spain, and leader of the research, expressed gratitude for the RadioAstron space mission, which enabled the highest-resolution image of a blazar’s interior to date.

The new insights into the plasma jet of 3C 279, facilitated by the RadioAstron mission, reveal previously unseen details. The jet, extending over 570 light-years from the center, displays at least two twisted filaments of plasma. Eduardo Ros, a member of the research team, highlighted the complementary role of different telescopes, noting that the GMVA and the EHT observed the inner jet at shorter wavelengths but couldn’t detect the filamentary shapes due to their faintness and size.

Contrary to the previous belief that plasma jets from blazars are straight and uniform, the twists and turns observed in 3C 279, referred to as helical filaments, indicate the influence of forces around the black hole. This led to the realization that the existing theory explaining jet evolution over time is no longer sufficient. Consequently, the astronomers emphasize the necessity for new theoretical models to elucidate the formation and evolution of helical filaments near the jet’s origin.

Guang-Yao Zhao, affiliated with the MPIfR, pointed out an intriguing aspect suggesting the presence of a helical magnetic field confining the jet. This magnetic field, rotating clockwise around the jet in 3C 279, might play a role in directing and guiding the jet’s plasma, moving at an astonishing 0.997 times the speed of light.

Andrei Lobanov, another scientist from MPIfR, highlighted the novelty of the study, connecting these filaments to intricate processes in the immediate vicinity of the black hole producing the jet.

The study, featured in the latest issue of Nature Astronomy, contributes to a better understanding of the role of magnetic fields in the initial formation of relativistic outflows from active galactic nuclei. It underscores the challenges in current theoretical modeling and emphasizes the need for advancements in radio astronomical instruments and techniques for imaging distant cosmic objects at record angular resolutions.

The technological advancements that enabled this discovery relied on Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), creating a virtual telescope by combining data from different radio observatories. Yuri Kovalev, the RadioAstron project scientist, emphasized the importance of international collaboration, with observatories from twelve countries synchronized to form a virtual telescope the size of the distance to the Moon.

Anton Zensus, director of the MPIfR and a key figure behind the RadioAstron mission, highlighted the exceptional achievements resulting from international scientific collaboration, spanning decades of planning and execution. The success of the mission underscores the significance of connecting large ground-based telescopes and meticulous data analysis for unlocking the mysteries of the cosmos.

In a groundbreaking achievement, an experiment conducted aboard NASA’s Psyche spacecraft has utilized deep space optical communications (DSOC) to transmit a laser-encoded message to Earth from a distance unprecedented in space exploration. The DSOC, part of a two-year tech demonstration riding alongside the Psyche mission en route to the asteroid Psyche, successfully beamed a near-infrared laser carrying test data from a position approximately 16 million kilometers away—about 40 times farther than the Moon is from Earth. This remarkable feat marks a significant milestone in optical communication technology and has the potential to revolutionize spacecraft communication methods.

The Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) achieved “first light” on November 14, as reported by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the entity overseeing both missions. This accomplishment resulted from a precise maneuver where the DSOC’s laser transceiver locked onto JPL’s powerful uplink laser beacon at the Table Mountain Observatory. This alignment enabled the DSOC’s transceiver to direct its downlink laser to the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in California, located 130 kilometers away.

Trudy Kortes, Director of Technology Demonstrations at NASA HQ, highlighted the significance of this achievement, stating, “Achieving first light is one of many critical DSOC milestones in the coming months, paving the way toward higher-data-rate communications capable of sending scientific information, high-definition imagery, and streaming video in support of humanity’s next giant leap: sending humans to Mars.”

While optical communications have been employed in Earth’s orbit previously, this marks the farthest-ever distance covered by laser beams. Laser communication involves the transmission of a beam of photons moving in the same direction at the same wavelength. The advantage lies in the ability to pack vast amounts of data into tight waves, allowing for unprecedented data transmission speeds. The DSOC tech demo aims to demonstrate transmission rates 10-100 times greater than current top radio communication systems, offering the potential for missions to carry higher-resolution scientific instruments and enabling faster communication for deep space missions, such as live video streams from the surface of Mars.

Dr. Jason Mitchell, Director of the Advanced Communications and Navigation Technologies Division within NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation program, emphasized the benefits of optical communication for scientists and researchers, stating, “Optical communication is a boon for scientists and researchers who always want more from their space missions and will enable human exploration of deep space. More data means more discoveries.”

Despite the success of this record-breaking technology demonstration, challenges remain. The precision required to point the laser beam increases with greater distances, and the signal’s photons become fainter, leading to potential lag times in communication. During the November 14 test, the photons took approximately 50 seconds to travel from Psyche to Earth. As Psyche reaches its farthest distance, this travel time is expected to extend to around 20 minutes, necessitating adjustments in the laser positions on both Earth and the spacecraft to account for changes in position.

Meera Srinivasan, Operations Lead for DSOC at JPL, acknowledged the formidable challenge faced by the DSOC and Psyche operations teams, stating, “[The] test was the first to fully incorporate the ground assets and flight transceiver, requiring the DSOC and Psyche operations teams to work in tandem. It was a formidable challenge, and we have a lot more work to do, but for a short time, we were able to transmit, receive, and decode some data.”

Abi Biswas, Project Technologist for DSOC at JPL, encapsulated the achievement by stating, “[We] were able to exchange ‘bits of light’ from and to deep space.” This exchange of bits of light holds the potential to redefine how we communicate in the realm of space exploration, opening up new frontiers for data transmission and scientific discovery.

The universe is a vast realm of enigmatic wonders, and as Halloween approaches, NASA has uncovered some eerie cosmic phenomena. From a haunting “face” on Jupiter to a ghostly skeletal hand-shaped nebula, these celestial discoveries are sending shivers down the spines of stargazers.

Jupiter’s Eerie ‘Face’

NASA’s Juno mission, which has been orbiting Jupiter and its largest moons since 2016, recently completed its 54th close flyby of the gas giant on September 7. During this pass, Juno’s JunoCam instrument captured stunning images of Jupiter’s northern regions along the terminator, the line that separates the day side from the night side.

In these images, observers with vivid imaginations may detect what resembles a Picasso-like face emerging from the turbulent atmosphere. This phenomenon, known as pareidolia, occurs when viewers perceive familiar shapes and objects in random patterns. The raw data from this flyby, publicly available on the JunoCam website, was meticulously processed by a citizen scientist named Vladimir Tarasov. The close proximity of Juno, approximately 4,800 miles (7,700 kilometers) above the planet’s cloud tops, allowed for a dramatic interplay of sunlight and shadows, enhancing the eerie appearance of this celestial face.

X-Rays Reveal Celestial Bones

Over a century ago, physicist Wilhelm Röntgen pioneered the use of X-rays to image the bones of his wife’s hand in 1895. Now, two X-ray telescopes have unveiled the “bones” of a luminous hand-shaped cloud that originated from the aftermath of a collapsing star.

This cloud of gas and dust, a nebula known as MSH 15-52, formed 1,500 years ago when a massive star exhausted its nuclear fuel and collapsed. Situated a staggering 16,000 light-years from Earth, the nebula boasts a remarkable history. When the star underwent its collapse, it left behind a dense remnant, a neutron star. Neutron stars that rotate rapidly and possess powerful magnetic fields are classified as pulsars. These pulsars emit energetic jets and powerful winds, giving rise to this particular nebula.

In 2001, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory initially observed the pulsar, identified as PSR B1509-58, located at the “palm” of the hand-shaped nebula. A distinct jet emerging from the pulsar can be traced down to the “wrist.”

Mapping a Nebula’s Magnetic Field

Fast forward over two decades, and NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) embarked on a 17-day observation campaign of the nebula. Launched in December 2021, IXPE recorded its most extended observation period to date. The findings of this operation were recently published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Lead study author Roger Romani, a professor of physics at Stanford University in California, explained, “The IXPE data gives us the first map of the magnetic field in the ‘hand.'” He continued, “The charged particles producing the X-rays travel along the magnetic field, determining the basic shape of the nebula, like the bones do in a person’s hand.” This observation revealed the unique capability of IXPE to identify regions within the magnetic field where particles in the nebula are accelerated by turbulence.

As we approach Halloween, these otherworldly discoveries remind us that the cosmos is a realm of both beauty and mystery, offering glimpses of the extraordinary, even in the farthest reaches of space.

Sir David Attenborough’s latest installment of the Planet Earth series has garnered praise for its breathtaking visuals and poignant storytelling, but it has also evoked a sense of concern and sadness among viewers. The third season of this award-winning program debuted on BBC One, attracting an audience of 5.6 million.

The eight-part series offers a glimpse into the struggles of wildlife across the globe as they contend with ever-changing environmental conditions. The Guardian hailed the first episode as “majestic TV” from the venerable broadcaster, describing it as both awe-inspiring and disconcerting. Rebecca Nicholson, in a five-star review, noted, “It is possible to watch and enjoy it purely for the astonishing footage – but it will horrify you too.” She also emphasized the darker tone of this series compared to its predecessor, highlighting the concerning trends in the natural world.

Narrated by the 97-year-old Sir David, the documentary features footage from drones and remotely operated deep-sea submersibles, collected over a five-year period across 43 countries. The initial episode explores coastlines from Kent to South Africa, Mexico to Australia, and beyond. It presents two cautionary tales centered on the challenges faced by Caribbean flamingos on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and the endangered green turtles of Raine Island on the Great Barrier Reef. The episode also includes vintage footage of a young Sir David visiting the same island more than 60 years ago, highlighting the impact of human activity on these ecosystems.

Carol Midgley of The Times, in a four-star review, praised the series as magnificent but also acknowledged its potential to evoke sadness. She cited examples such as desert lions hunting cormorants in the sea at night, a remarkable sight, but also the distressing scenes of Caribbean flamingos and their nests being destroyed by worsening storms, attributed to climate change. She noted, “Soaked and cold [they] will soon perish unless they can get out of the water. Some years no chicks survive.”

Ed Power of The Telegraph celebrated Sir David’s ability to convey the beauty and fragility of our planet. He marveled at the stunning visuals presented in the series, including mesmerizing shots of flamingos in flight and their vulnerable young struggling to survive in the rain. Power concluded that Sir David’s presence is reassuring at a time of uncertainty in the world.

This season, the series has moved to an earlier time slot to make it more accessible to children, giving them opportunities to connect with and understand the natural world. Sir David emphasized the importance of children’s innate understanding of nature while cautioning against deforestation and the encroachment on natural spaces. He highlighted the need for coexistence with the natural world, asserting that we must accommodate and protect it.

In his review for the Daily Mail, Christopher Stevens found every moment of the opening episode fascinating. He praised the series for being visually stunning, acknowledging that it’s challenging to single out a “best” Attenborough series from the past seven decades but suggested that Planet Earth III could be the most visually spectacular.

The I newspaper’s Gerard Gilbert, in a five-star review, characterized the show as spectacular, eye-opening, awe-inspiring, and terrifying. He underscored that this series reflects the closest Sir David Attenborough has come to despair, conveying a message of urgency to appreciate and safeguard the natural world before it’s too late.

The latest installment of the Planet Earth series has captivated viewers with its stunning visuals and powerful storytelling. It presents both the grandeur of the natural world and the urgent need to protect it, leaving audiences with a profound sense of wonder and concern.

Recent images from the James Webb Space Telescope have unveiled intriguing pairs of planet-like objects in the Orion Nebula that defy previous detection. The Orion Nebula, a luminous cloud of dust and gas, is among the most prominent nebulae in the night sky and is recognizable as the “sword” in the Orion constellation. Situated 1,300 light-years from Earth, this nebula has been a focal point for astronomers, offering a plethora of celestial objects to investigate, including planet-forming disks encircling young stars and brown dwarfs, which are celestial bodies with mass falling between that of planets and stars.

Astronomers employed Webb’s near-infrared camera, known as NIRCam, to capture comprehensive images of the Orion Nebula, spanning both short and long wavelengths of light, thereby unveiling unprecedented insights and unforeseen revelations.

In their examination of the short-wavelength image of the Orion Nebula, astronomers Samuel G. Pearson and Mark J. McCaughrean directed their attention to the Trapezium Cluster, a youthful star-forming region approximately one million years old, teeming with thousands of emerging stars. Among these stars, the scientists identified brown dwarfs, celestial objects too small to initiate the nuclear fusion process characteristic of stars. Brown dwarfs possess a mass less than 7% that of the Sun.

While on the quest to locate additional low-mass isolated entities, the astronomers stumbled upon an entirely novel phenomenon: pairs of planet-like objects with masses ranging from 0.6 to 13 times that of Jupiter. These enigmatic objects appeared to challenge some fundamental tenets of astronomical theories, prompting the scientists to christen them “Jupiter Mass Binary Objects,” or JuMBOs.

Although some of these JuMBOs exceed the mass of Jupiter, they are generally comparable in size, only slightly larger. According to Pearson, a European Space Agency research fellow based at the European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands, “Although some of them are more massive than the planet Jupiter, they will be roughly the same size and only slightly larger.”

The astronomers’ investigation unveiled a total of 40 pairs of JuMBOs and two triple systems, all of which exhibited wide orbits around one another. Despite their paired existence, these objects typically maintained a separation of about 200 astronomical units, equivalent to 200 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. Completing an orbit around each other required a substantial duration, ranging from 20,000 to 80,000 years.

These enigmatic JuMBOs exhibited a temperature range spanning from 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (537 degrees Celsius) to 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit (1,260 degrees Celsius). These gaseous entities are relatively youthful in astronomical terms, boasting an age of approximately one million years, whereas our solar system has endured for 4.57 billion years

Mark J. McCaughrean, senior adviser for science and exploration at the European Space Agency, aptly characterized these objects as “3-day-old babies” compared to the age of our solar system. Their continued luminosity and warmth stem from the energy they retained at their formation, allowing them to emit detectable light.

To document their discoveries in the Orion Nebula, McCaughrean and Pearson composed two research papers, which have been submitted for publication in academic journals. Preliminary findings are available on the preprint platform arXiv. However, numerous questions about JuMBOs persist, particularly regarding their origins.

The formation of stars typically originates from massive clouds of gas and dust that succumb to gravitational forces, a process accompanied by the emergence of planetary systems. Nevertheless, existing theories fail to account for the formation of JuMBOs or their presence in the Orion Nebula, as McCaughrean noted. While some might liken JuMBOs to rogue planets, objects of planetary mass that roam through space independently of stars, it remains challenging to explain how pairs of these objects were simultaneously expelled while maintaining gravitational connection.

Pearson emphasized the implications of these discoveries, stating, “Scientists have been working on theories and models of star and planet formation for decades, but none of them have ever predicted that we would find pairs of super low mass objects floating alone in space — and we’re seeing lots of them.” This revelation raises questions about the understanding of both planet and star formation.

The Orion Nebula ranks among astronomers’ favored targets for observation. As telescopes grow in size and sophistication, they reveal an increasing number of objects within this nebula. Pearson underscored the significance of Webb’s infrared capabilities, stating, “JWST is the most powerful infrared telescope that has ever been built, and these observations simply wouldn’t be possible with any other telescope.”

Future observations scheduled for early 2024 may provide further insights into the atmospheric compositions of JuMBOs. Researchers also seek to refine their understanding of these objects by obtaining precise measurements of their masses. Furthermore, investigations focused on other star-forming regions could determine whether JuMBOs are present beyond the confines of the Orion Nebula.

As Pearson summarized, “The main question is, ‘What?! Where did that come from?’ It’s just so unexpected that a lot of future observations and modeling are going to be needed to explain it.”

New research has unveiled a fascinating insight into how people across the world spend their daily 24 hours. With a global population of approximately 8 billion, this translates to an astonishing 190 billion human hours every day. How we distribute this time has profound implications for our environment and life experiences. To gain a deeper understanding of how individuals worldwide allocate their time, a team from McGill University embarked on an extensive study, offering an unprecedented glimpse into a typical day on our planet.

Eric Galbraith, a professor in Earth System Science at McGill University and the senior author of the study, emphasized the need for fresh perspectives in addressing global challenges. He stated, “If we are to sustainably navigate climate change and biodiversity loss, adapt to rapid technological change, and achieve global development goals, it is crucial to understand the big picture of how the global human system functions, so that we can see where there is potential for change.”

The research aimed to provide a holistic, bird’s-eye view of our collective daily activities. William Fajzel, a Ph.D. student in Earth System Science at McGill University and the first author of the study, explained their objective: “We wanted to know – what does the time allocation of humanity look like, averaged over all people and across all countries? In other words, if the world were a single average person, what would their day look like?”

To answer this question, the research team analyzed time use and labor data spanning from 2000 to 2019, a period that excluded any impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic. They gathered data from over 140 countries, representing 87% of the world’s population.

The researchers categorized all the activities people engage in during their waking hours, encompassing both work-related and non-work-related activities. These activities were classified into 24 categories falling into three broad groups:

1. Activities intended to alter the external world, including tasks related to food, energy, construction, and environmental maintenance.
2. Activities focused directly on human minds or bodies, encompassing personal care, education, leisure, socializing, and more.
3. Organizing activities within society, such as transportation, trade, finance, law, and governance.

In their meticulous analysis, the team manually classified nearly 4,000 distinct activities, leading to some intriguing findings.

The most significant portion of our daily hours is devoted to activities centered around humans, totaling just over 9 hours. Additionally, sleep or being in bed accounts for another 9 hours, including the longer sleep patterns observed in youth. Of the remaining 6 hours, various tasks like food cultivation and preparation, commuting, and allocation-related duties (e.g., trade, finance, sales, law, governance, policing) each occupy approximately 1 hour. Astonishingly, waste management claims only 1 minute of our global day, a sharp contrast to the 45 minutes spent on cleaning and maintaining our living spaces. Furthermore, all construction and infrastructure-related activities take up just about 15 minutes.

Interestingly, the study found that the time allocated to activities like meals, daily travel, personal hygiene, and food preparation does not exhibit a systematic relationship with a population’s material wealth. In contrast, the time spent on food cultivation and collection displayed a strong correlation with economic status, varying from over 1 hour in low-income countries to less than 5 minutes in high-income countries.

Approximately one-tenth of the day is dedicated to economic activities. This includes both economic and non-economic activities. Within these categories, some of the total time represents individuals engaged in economic activities, such as doctors, nurses, cooks, and agricultural laborers.

The research team estimated that the entire global economy occupies approximately 2.6 hours of the average human day. Agriculture and livestock production dominate this economic activity, followed by allocational activities like trade, finance, law, and manufacturing. While this 2.6-hour figure may appear small, it equates to a 40-hour workweek for the two-thirds of the world’s working-age population (ages 15-64) that comprise the labor force.

These findings offer a unique perspective on the interplay between economic activities and the broader tapestry of human life on a global scale. They also suggest opportunities to reevaluate the allocation of time among specific activities, such as resource extraction, energy provisioning, and waste management, which currently require only around seven minutes of our daily lives.

India has officially concluded its lunar mission with the Pragyan rover, the pioneering craft that successfully reached the elusive lunar south pole. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) confirmed the rover’s transition into “Sleep mode” following its fruitful two-week assignment, equipped with charged batteries and an active receiver. ISRO expressed hope for a future reawakening for new tasks but also acknowledged the possibility of the rover remaining a perpetual lunar representative for India.

In a statement, ISRO stated, “Hoping for a successful awakening for another set of assignments! Else, it will forever stay there as India’s lunar ambassador.” This decision marks the end of a remarkable lunar endeavor that placed India alongside prestigious spacefaring nations like the United States, China, and the former Soviet Union. Furthermore, India achieved a significant milestone by venturing beyond these nations to reach the challenging lunar south pole, following the unfortunate crash of Russia’s Luna-25 during a similar attempt.

Chandrayaan-3, India’s lunar mission, achieved a remarkable and precise touchdown, a stark contrast to the earlier failed attempt in 2019. This achievement sparked jubilation across the nation, with the media lauding it as India’s most outstanding scientific accomplishment to date.

Pragyan, the rover, played a pivotal role in this mission by embarking on a journey of over 100 meters (330 feet) across the lunar surface. During its travels, it confirmed the presence of essential elements such as sulphur, iron, and oxygen on the moon, providing valuable insights into lunar composition and geology.

With the lunar mission’s success, India has set its sights on the sun, launching a probe on Saturday designed to study solar phenomena, particularly solar winds that can disrupt Earth’s magnetosphere and lead to the captivating auroras. ISRO has reported that the satellite is currently in good health and orbiting Earth as it prepares for its ambitious 1.5 million-kilometer (930,000-mile) journey towards the sun.

India’s lunar mission, encompassing the Pragyan rover and the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, has concluded after a productive two-week assignment. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced that the Pragyan rover has entered “Sleep mode,” equipped with charged batteries and an active receiver, marking the end of its lunar exploration phase. ISRO expressed optimism for the rover’s potential reactivation for future missions but also acknowledged the possibility of it remaining a permanent lunar envoy for India.

ISRO conveyed this development in a statement, stating, “Hoping for a successful awakening for another set of assignments! Else, it will forever stay there as India’s lunar ambassador.” This decision signifies the culmination of a remarkable lunar endeavor that propelled India into the ranks of esteemed spacefaring nations, including the United States, China, and the former Soviet Union. Notably, India went beyond these achievements by successfully reaching the challenging lunar south pole, an accomplishment that followed the unfortunate crash of Russia’s Luna-25 during a similar attempt.

Chandrayaan-3, India’s lunar mission, achieved a precise and flawless landing, a stark contrast to its previous failed attempt in 2019. This achievement sparked jubilation throughout the nation, with the media heralding it as India’s most significant scientific achievement to date.

Crucially, the Pragyan rover played a pivotal role in the mission’s success, embarking on an extensive journey covering over 100 meters (330 feet) across the lunar terrain. During its travels, Pragyan confirmed the presence of key elements such as sulphur, iron, and oxygen on the moon. These findings have provided invaluable insights into lunar composition and geology, enhancing our understanding of Earth’s celestial neighbor.

Having achieved success on the lunar front, India is now setting its sights on the sun, launching a probe designed to study solar phenomena, particularly solar winds that can disrupt Earth’s magnetosphere and give rise to the captivating auroras. ISRO has reported that the satellite is currently in a healthy state and is orbiting Earth as it prepares for its ambitious 1.5 million-kilometer (930,000-mile) journey towards the sun.

In summary, India’s lunar mission, highlighted by the Pragyan rover and the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, has officially concluded its lunar exploration phase after accomplishing a series of experiments over a two-week period. ISRO’s decision to transition the rover into “Sleep mode” marks the end of this remarkable lunar journey, while also holding the possibility of future reactivation for new missions. This achievement elevates India to the ranks of prestigious spacefaring nations, with the unique distinction of reaching the challenging lunar south pole. Moreover, the flawless landing of Chandrayaan-3 in contrast to the previous attempt in 2019 garnered widespread acclaim, establishing it as a landmark in India’s scientific endeavors.

The Pragyan rover’s extensive exploration of over 100 meters on the lunar surface confirmed the presence of essential elements, such as sulphur, iron, and oxygen, further enriching our knowledge of the moon’s composition and geology. Looking ahead, India’s space endeavors continue with a mission focused on the sun, aimed at studying solar winds and their impact on Earth, particularly the creation of auroras. ISRO has reported that the sun-studying satellite is in excellent condition and is poised to embark on its ambitious 1.5 million-kilometer journey toward the sun.

India’s first solar observation mission, Aditya-L1, is set to be launched by PSLV-C57 rocket from the spaceport on Sriharikota, an island off the southern state of Andhra Pradesh last week.

The development comes days after India became the first country to land a spacecraft close to the lunar south pole on August 23.

The sun is our nearest star and, therefore, can be studied in much more details compared to other stars.

Aditya-L1’s seven payloads are expected to provide crucial information to understand coronal heating, coronal mass ejection, pre-flare and flare activities and dynamics of space weather among other things.

The primary payload of Aditya-L1 will be sending 1,440 images per day to the ground station for analysis on reaching the intended orbit.

The spacecraft is scheduled to spend 125 days, travelling 1.5 million km to its destination. The solar mission will make India one of a small group of countries with probes studying the sun.

China has two such spacecraft orbiting Earth. Hinode, backed by space agencies from Japan, the UK, the US and Europe, is orbiting Earth and measures the magnetic fields of the sun.

Then there is the Solar & Heliospheric Observatory mission (SOHO), a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency. The US has other solar missions, including the Parker Solar Probe, which in 2021 became the first spacecraft to pass through the sun’s corona, or upper atmosphere.

In the 6th century BC, Pythagoras, a renowned mathematician, unveiled his groundbreaking discovery that the square of the hypotenuse in a right-angled triangle equals the sum of the squares of its other sides. This revelation garnered immense acclaim, with the Greek colony of Croton declaring a 10-day celebration complete with a sumptuous feast. Pythagoras’s reputation as an academic superstar was solidified (“Pythagorean Theorem and its Reception: Ancient Greece’s Mathematical Triumph”).

In 8th century BC India, Baudhayana made a parallel revelation in his Sulba Sutra, establishing that the square formed by the “diagonal” of a triangle encompassed the combined area of squares formed by the triangle’s length and breadth. This concept mirrored the Pythagorean theorem, indicating its emergence even earlier in India (“Unveiling the Indian Origin of the Pythagorean Theorem”).

Advancing to Pythagoras’s era, his assertion that any number could be expressed as a perfect ratio of two natural numbers was challenged by a student, possibly Hippasus. Hippasus discovered that the square root of 2 could not be exactly expressed as a ratio, leading to a conundrum. Pythagoras, in order to preserve his theorem’s integrity, allegedly resorted to extreme measures, committing the chilling act of murdering Hippasus (“The Enigma of Hippasus and the Challenge to Pythagoras”).

Contrasting the peaceful academic climate in ancient India, Baudhayana and Aryabhata readily embraced irrational numbers, exemplified by approximations for the square root of 2 and “pi.” Unlike the Greeks, who struggled with arithmetic due to the absence of a place-value number system, these Indian mathematicians exhibited a more pragmatic approach (“Embracing Irrationality: Ancient Indian Mathematics”).

The absence of zero in the Greek mathematical framework posed difficulties in numerical calculations. Roman numerals, devoid of a place-value system, complicated arithmetic operations. Additionally, the Greeks were averse to the concept of zero, which they deemed a void, and they lacked negative numbers as these held no relevance in subtracting larger areas from smaller ones (“Zero’s Emergence and the Greek Numerical Dilemma”).

The 6th and 7th centuries AD marked a pivotal period for zero’s conceptual evolution, particularly with the mathematician Brahmagupta. While zero was used symbolically prior, Brahmagupta was the first to define zero as the remainder when subtracting a number from itself. This innovation facilitated the integration of zero into arithmetic and the establishment of the place-value decimal system. Brahmagupta also introduced negative numbers, endowing them with practical significance as “debts” (“Brahmagupta: Architect of the Concept of Zero”).

Brahmagupta’s seminal work, the Brahmasphutasiddhanta, penned in 628 AD, later reached the attention of Caliph al-Mansur of Baghdad through Indian scholar Kanka. This prompted an Arabic translation of the text, leading the Arabs to gradually embrace the concept of zero, which they termed “sifr” (“Zero’s Journey to the Arab World”).

Zero’s impact on Europe was delayed by 400 years until the Moors introduced it upon conquering Spain. While businesses embraced zero for balancing accounts, governments exhibited resistance; Florence even banned its use in 1299. The allure of zero persisted among merchants, who clandestinely employed a symbol to represent it despite the ban. The association of zero with secret codes gave rise to the term “cipher” (“Zero’s Assimilation in Europe: The Battle between Merchants and Governments”).

Ultimately, the enduring popularity of a number system is evident in the creation of secret codes to continue its use illicitly. Brahmagupta and Baudhayana, the architects of numerical concepts, may not have foreseen their profound influence. Regrettably, Baudhayana’s theorem is often attributed to Pythagoras, and Brahmagupta’s pivotal contributions to “Arabic numerals” remain relatively obscure (“Legacy of Mathematical Thought: Baudhayana, Brahmagupta, and the Evolution of Numbers”).

An unprecedented discovery in the realm of paleontology has unveiled a 300,000-year-old skull that challenges the known narrative of premodern human evolution. Recent research conducted by an international coalition of scholars from China, Spain, and the United Kingdom has brought to light a fossilized skull fragment, specifically the lower jawbone, in the Hualongdong area of eastern China in 2015. This fossil, along with 15 other specimens found at the same site, is believed to have originated during the late Middle Pleistocene era, a crucial juncture in the evolutionary trajectory of hominins, species closely related to humans.

The study, published on July 31 in the Journal of Human Evolution, illuminates the profoundly distinctive nature of the mandible, designated as HLD 6. It has defied conventional classification, perplexing researchers with its enigmatic attributes that defy existing taxonomic groups. This peculiarity is not an isolated occurrence among Chinese Pleistocene hominin remains; several others have eluded straightforward categorization, previously regarded as outliers. However, this recent revelation, coupled with other contemporaneous investigations, is steadily reshaping the understanding of evolutionary developments during the late Middle Pleistocene era.

HLD 6 and its Mosaic of Characteristics

Upon meticulous examination of the HLD 6 mandible, juxtaposed with those from Pleistocene hominins and modern humans, the research collective observed a fusion of features. Strikingly similar in shape to the mandible of Homo sapiens, the modern human species tracing its roots to Homo erectus, HLD 6 also exhibits a distinguishing trait akin to another branch stemming from Homo erectus: the Denisovans. A noticeable absence of a chin, a shared aspect with the Denisovans, is evident in HLD 6.

María Martinón-Torres, a co-author of the study and the director of the National Research Center on Human Evolution (CENIEH) in Spain, elucidated, “HLD 6 does not present a true chin but has some weakly expressed traits that seem to anticipate this typically H. sapiens feature.” This amalgamation of primitive attributes and those reminiscent of Homo sapiens distinguishes the Hualongdong population as the earliest known Asian fossil group to exhibit such a distinctive blend.

The postulation emerges that HLD 6 belongs to a class that remains unnamed, suggesting that hallmark characteristics of modern humans may have manifested as far back as 300,000 years ago, preceding the emergence of anatomically modern humans in eastern Asia. To account for potential variations between juvenile and adult skull structures, the researchers contemplated the age of the individual to whom the jawbone belonged.

HLD 6 is inferred to have been part of a 12- to 13-year-old individual. Although a comparable adult skull of the same species for comparison was unavailable, the team examined skulls from Middle and Late Pleistocene hominins of equivalent ages. Notably, the consistent patterns in cranial shapes across different ages provided further validation for their hypothesis.

Despite the insightful revelations gleaned from HLD 6, Martinón-Torres underscores the necessity for further investigation to definitively contextualize this find within the broader evolutionary framework.

In conclusion, an unparalleled archaeological revelation has been unveiled, carrying the potential to redefine the historical trajectory of human evolution. The unearthing of a 300,000-year-old mandible, referred to as HLD 6, in China’s Hualongdong region has stumped researchers due to its unprecedented amalgamation of traits that defy conventional classification. This discovery challenges prior assumptions about Pleistocene hominin fossils in China and compels a reconsideration of late Middle Pleistocene evolutionary patterns.

This groundbreaking study, featured in the Journal of Human Evolution on July 31, underscores the intriguing mixture of attributes within HLD 6’s mandible. Resonating with the shape of Homo sapiens’ mandibles while sharing the unique lack of a chin with the Denisovans, HLD 6 encapsulates a distinctive blend of characteristics that demarcates it as a novel entity. This mosaic of features presents a pioneering insight into the evolutionary development of early hominins in Asia, potentially indicating that recognizable modern human traits had emerged Religion300,000 years ago.

Nevertheless, the researchers acknowledge the complexity of their discovery and the necessity for additional investigations. In the absence of an adult skull of the same species for direct comparison, the team turned to comparable hominin skulls of varying ages, finding consistent patterns that reinforce their assertions. María Martinón-Torres, a lead researcher on the project, highlights the significance of continued research to holistically contextualize HLD 6 within the broader evolutionary narrative.

“More fossils and studies are necessary to understand their precise position in the human family tree,” she said.

A luminous symbol resembling a question mark, originating from the cosmos, has unexpectedly appeared in the background of NASA’s most recent imagery obtained through the James Webb Space Telescope. Experts are now speculating about the identity and nature of this enigmatic cosmic feature.

Unveiled on July 26, the initial near-infrared depiction portrayed a pair of fledgling stars denominated as Herbig-Haro 46/47. These stars are located within the Vela constellation of the Milky Way galaxy, situated at a distance of 1,470 light-years. These youthful stars are in an active phase of formation and are engaged in an intimate orbital dance around each other.

Although space and ground-based observatories have been scrutinizing these two stars since the 1950s, the extraordinary sensitivity of the Webb telescope has permitted the capture of the most intricate and high-resolution image to date. Distinguishing itself from its predecessors, the Webb telescope is designed to perceive the universe through longer wavelengths of light, offering a unique vantage point for exploration.

The James Webb Space Telescope serves as a beacon of insight into the origins of the cosmos. However, the presence of an enigmatic entity in the background of this image has sparked a multitude of questions, eclipsing the available answers. This cosmic question mark has yet to be subjected to meticulous observation and study, thus leaving scientists uncertain about its origin and composition.

Yet, grounded in the object’s form and position, scientists are constructing hypotheses. Matt Caplan, an assistant professor of physics at Illinois State University, noted, “The very first thing you can rule out is that it’s a star in the Milky Way… Stars always have these really big spikes… because stars are point-like.” This diffraction phenomenon, emanating from the mirror edges and camera supports, is a stark contrast to the anomaly’s structure. Caplan elaborated that the Webb telescope typically reveals six to eight stellar “prongs,” which unequivocally dismisses the possibility of it being a star.

Christopher Britt, an education and outreach scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, responsible for managing the Webb telescope’s scientific operations, posited the possibility of the object being a merger between two galaxies positioned billions of light-years away. This distance far surpasses the proximity of Herbig-Haro 46/47. According to Britt, the universe houses an array of galaxies beyond the confines of our own Milky Way, and their interactions, including collisions, lead to various configurations. These collisions can result in diverse shapes, even resembling a question mark.

While this specific entity’s appearance may be unprecedented, the amalgamation of galaxies into question mark-like configurations has manifested before. A contrasting variation of this form emerged from the Antennae Galaxies in the Corvus constellation. Moreover, most galaxies have undergone numerous interactions similar to this throughout their existence. However, these shapes are often transient, fleeting through cosmic time.

“The nature of space defies precise determination,” stated Caplan, underscoring the inherent complexity of cosmic movements. The Earth’s sun, partaking in its orbit around the galaxy, and the galaxy itself, composed of stars, experience gravitational forces tugging them in myriad directions. This ceaseless interplay underscores the dynamism of celestial mechanics.

This cosmic interplay is also the ultimate destiny for our own Milky Way galaxy, which will eventually merge with the Andromeda galaxy in approximately 4 billion years, as predicted by Britt. However, the precise configuration of this amalgamation remains uncertain.

Britt further hypothesized that the question mark shape might indicate a gravitational interaction between the two galaxies. “That hook of the question mark on the top looks a lot, to me, like what we call a tidal tail, where the stream of stars and gas has been kind of ripped off and has flown out into space,” he explained. To unravel the mysteries of this enigma, more data in the form of spectroscopic analyses is required, as emphasized by both Britt and Caplan. Such analyses could divulge essential details about the object’s distance and chemical composition.

“Nobody’s going to do this, though, because this is very much ‘a local man finds a chicken tender that looks like George Washington,’” Caplan said. “But there (are) observations you could make if you were motivated enough.”

“Dying Could Become Optional in 27 Years, Genetic Engineers Claim, as Immortality and Reversible Ageing Are on the Horizon”

During the book presentation of “The Death of Death” in Barcelona, two genetic engineers, José Luis Cordeiro and David Wood, made bold assertions about the future of human mortality and ageing. Cordeiro, hailing from Venezuela with Spanish roots and associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA, and Wood, a mathematician from Cambridge (UK) and co-founder of the ‘Symbian’ operating system, firmly believe that dying may become optional within the next 27 years, and that ageing could become reversible.

Their book explores the possibility of achieving immortality through scientific means, and they assert that this milestone could come sooner than previously imagined. According to their predictions, by approximately the year 2045, humans would only die from accidents and never from natural causes or illnesses, given the advancements in medical science and genetic engineering.

A crucial aspect of their vision involves reclassifying old age as an “illness” to enable publicly-funded research aimed at finding a “cure” for ageing. They emphasize the significance of nanotechnology and other genetic manipulation techniques as central to the process. The proposed approach includes transforming detrimental genes into healthy ones, removing dead cells from the body, repairing damaged cells, implementing stem cell treatments, and even 3D printing vital organs.

At the core of the ageing process lies the shortening of DNA ‘tails,’ known as ‘telomeres,’ in chromosomes. In most cells (except red blood and sex cells), these chromosomes have 23 pairs, and as telomeres become progressively shorter, ageing occurs. Factors like exposure to toxins, such as smoking, alcohol, and air pollution, can accelerate this shortening process, leading to premature ageing.

Cordeiro and Wood’s research has led them to believe that within the next decade, diseases like cancer will become curable. Major corporations, including Google and Microsoft, are already expressing interest in medical breakthroughs related to ageing, with Microsoft setting up a cryopreservation center to investigate cancer’s potential complete eradication.

The engineers point out that the immortality they envision won’t necessarily lead to overpopulation concerns. They argue that the Earth still has ample space for more inhabitants, especially since modern societies tend to have fewer children than in the past.

Additionally, they predict that living in space will be a feasible option by that time, further expanding human habitation possibilities.

Addressing concerns about the cost of anti-ageing treatments, Cordeiro likens it to the initial high prices of smartphones, stating that the cost will gradually decrease as the technology becomes more accessible and widespread. They draw parallels with technological advancements, which initially tend to be costly and exclusive but eventually become democratic and affordable.

The engineers disclose that they have already been applying their techniques for two years, albeit illegally, in Colombia due to the country’s less stringent regulations regarding genetic manipulation. They highlight the case of Elisabeth Parrish, their first human patient, who sought their treatment after experiencing signs of ageing. Although the treatment is deemed risky and currently illegal, Parrish has not experienced any adverse side effects, and her blood’s telomere level has reportedly become “20 years younger than before.”

“I want Spain to have a place in the world of these technologies and show that we’re not mad, it’s just that people still don’t know about them,” Wood concluded.

Their book, “The Death of Death,” will be published in Spanish, English, Portuguese, and Korean, with all proceeds from sales reinvested into their research.

While their predictions may be met with skepticism, Cordeiro and Wood’s vision represents a bold and ambitious leap into the future of medical science and genetic engineering. Only time will tell if their optimism is justified and if humankind can indeed overcome the barriers of mortality and ageing through groundbreaking scientific innovations.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has released a stunning postcard image of “Marker Band Valley” on Mars. The image shows two parts of the same day on the red planet; the panorama on the left is from 9.20 AM local Mars time whilst the one on the right is from 3.40 PM the same day. The image is a composite of two black and white panoramas taken by Curiosity’s navigation cameras. Additional colour was added to create a more artistic aesthetic, including blue for the part taken in the morning and red for the afternoon picture. The two images were taken to provide contrast to make the details stand out. The photo was taken on April 8, 2017 when the rover was in the foothills of Mount Sharp in the Gale Crater, an area it has been exploring since it landed in 2012.

The Marker Band Valley is a sulphate bearing region featuring unexpected signs of an ancient lake. From a distance, the valley is visible as well as two hills known as Bolivar and Deepdale. Curiosity engineer, Doug Ellison, said “capturing two times of day provides dark shadows because the lighting is coming in from the left and the right, like you might have on a stage – but instead of stage lights, we’re relying on the Sun.”

Although the two panoramas provide the main attraction, there are other features in the image. Since the camera was looking past the backside of the rover, parts of the rover itself is visible in the picture. There were three antennas and the rover’s nuclear power source, Radioisotope thermoelectric generator clearly visible. Additionally, the Radiations Assessment Detector in the image is designed to measure radiation levels on the planet. The data collected will be analyzed to determine how future astronauts can be protected from radiation during long-duration missions.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has been exploring Mars for more than five years, the longest duration of any Martian rover to date. Although Curiosity was not specifically designed to search for any indication of past or present life on the Red Planet, it is still an important mission. The data is critically important for understanding Mars and planning for future manned missions to the planet. Despite its longevity, Curiosity’s engineers are still discovering ways to explore and bring new information back to Earth.

As stated earlier, Curiosity’s target is to spend two Martian years exploring the Gale Crater area and then move to an area where there may be fresh mineral deposits. Meanwhile, NASA is preparing to send more rovers and drones to Mars to further investigate the Red Planet before manned missions are launched. With other space agencies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin also planning trips to Mars, the planet appears to be the next big endeavour of the space race.

In 1905, a package arrived at S Neumann & Co, a mining sales agency in London. The plain cardboard box was addressed to the agency and weighed just over a pound, but it carried cargo that was far from ordinary. Three months earlier, the surface manager of the Premier Mine in South Africa had been doing a routine inspection when he saw a reflected light in the rough wall above him. He thought it was a piece of glass that a colleague had placed there as a joke. Just in case, he took out his pocketknife to dig it out. Unfortunately, the knife snapped, and it took a lot of effort to remove the rock. Once it was removed, it turned out to be a monster of a diamond weighing 3,106.75 carats, almost the size of a fist. The Cullinan diamond, as it came to be known, was not just enormous but also unusually transparent.

After being polished and cleaved into several more manageable stones, the largest crystal it yielded would shine like the cool glow of a star in a distant galaxy, now known as the Great Star of Africa. The Cullinan diamond is the largest diamond ever found, known across the globe for its size and transparency. These characteristics were no accident. They were Clippir diamonds, a special category of the largest and clearest diamonds ever found, and they hold enigmatic stories of the Earth’s interior.

Today, the Cullinan diamonds are part of the British Crown Jewels, normally kept in the Tower of London and brought out for state events. The Cullinan I is in the Sovereign’s Sceptre, and the Imperial State Crown is embedded with its next-largest sibling, the Cullinan II. The less famous Cullinan III, IV, and V also featured in King Charles III’s coronation, placed on Camilla’s head during the ceremony on May 6th.

Before the rough diamond could take its place in history, however, it needed to be sold, which led to a significant concern: how do you transport such a valuable stone 7,926 miles (12,755km) without it being stolen? The precious rock was ultimately sent from Johannesburg by ordinary registered post for a mere three shillings, while a replica, placed conspicuously within the captain’s safe, was transported by steamboat to London, heavily guarded by police.

Clippir diamonds are fragments of the deep Earth, intriguing geological anomalies found disguised as mere jewellery. They are capsules from Earth’s mysterious realm of unfathomable pressures, swirling green rock, and elusive minerals far below the surface. Scientists worldwide have been studying them for decades to unlock the region’s secrets, and it’s the diamonds that we value most that are transforming our understanding of Earth’s interior.

The largest diamonds, like the Cullinan, have the most intriguing stories to tell. These special diamonds are stowaways from a world that we are rarely aware of, reaching the surface and providing clues about our planet’s otherwise inaccessible depths. These diamonds are unlike any other object that has made it out of the Earth’s interior without being changed to an unrecognizable extent.

The Cullinan diamond and other Clippir diamonds are captivating geological specimens. Their value is not just in their aesthetic appeal, but also in their tales about an enigmatic realm beyond our immediate experience. Clippir diamonds are transforming our understanding of Earth’s deep interior, and it’s a story that never fails to captivate the imagination of many.

Challenges in Diamond Research

Diamonds are some of the rarest and most valuable minerals on earth. They hold scientific value as well as commercial value, and researchers are always seeking new insights into their formation and characteristics. However, obtaining large, high-value diamonds for scientific research is no easy task. Even researchers who work regularly with diamonds find it difficult to acquire large specimens.

Maya Kopylova, a professor of mineral exploration at the University of British Columbia, acknowledges the challenges of obtaining diamond samples for research purposes. “Researchers have to have a good relationship with companies and they will never give you valuable samples,” she says. “So, they will never give us diamonds that are 6mm (0.2 inches) in size or larger.”

The obstacles to obtaining diamond samples are significant. Access to high-security facilities where diamonds are sorted is required, and identifying the specimens to be studied takes time and effort. Then comes the paperwork – all diamonds must travel with a Kimberley Process certificate, which proves their provenance and helps to prevent conflict or “blood” diamonds from entering the market.

Despite these challenges, Evan Smith, a research scientist at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), has access to one of the largest collections of diamonds on the planet – millions of gems that have been sent there to be valued, so that they can be insured or sold. “Every few days, you might get to borrow a diamond for maybe a few hours, maybe a day or two and study it,” says Smith.

Smith and an international team of scientists requisitioned 53 of the largest, clearest, and most expensive diamonds available, including some from the same mine as the Cullinan diamond, one of the largest diamonds ever found. What they found was revolutionary. Nearly three-quarters of the diamonds contained tiny pockets, or “inclusions” of metal that had avoided rusting, while the remaining 15 contained a kind of garnet which only forms within the Earth’s mantle, the layer above its molten core.

Together, these inclusions provide a wealth of chemical clues that reveal how the diamonds were formed and under what conditions. These clues indicate that the diamonds could only have formed no fewer than 360km (224 miles) and no more than 750km (466 miles) below the earth’s surface. In this Goldilocks zone, it’s deep enough to explain the metal inclusions that hadn’t been exposed to oxygen, which is abundant higher up, and it’s not so deep that the garnet rocks would have broken down under the immense pressures of the lower mantle. Ordinary diamonds originate below the crust, just 150-200km (93-124 miles) down.

Smith’s latest research project involved examining a diamond worth almost as much as a small country – about the size of a walnut, with 124 carats of wonderous brilliance. Smith carefully stretched some rubber gloves over his fingers, peered into the microscope’s lenses, and examined the diamond for inclusions. Working with high-value diamonds is always a tricky business, but at GIA, Smith has access to the equipment, facilities, and expertise necessary to conduct cutting-edge research.

Together with Wuyi Wang, who is vice president of Research & Development at GIA, Smith analysed the 124-carat diamond and found that it formed at the deeper end of the possible range – at least 660km (410 miles) below the earth’s surface. Their findings have important implications for our understanding of the processes that shape our planet, as well as for the mining industry and the global economy.

From the depths

According to Evan Smith, “From a geological perspective, diamonds [in general] are really strange minerals.” Interestingly, humans invest millions of dollars every year in the search for diamonds, despite the destruction and chaos that often comes with the mining of these precious stones. The unusual properties of diamonds make them intriguing and valuable rocks. In fact, diamonds are unique in comparison to other rocks on Earth because they form at much deeper levels – up to 600 km below the surface. Even magma that reaches the surface comes from around 400 km down, but that is melted rock. Thus, diamonds that emerge on the surface are a significant composition of the Earth’s deeper layers.

Every diamond besides lab-grown ones that has ever been sold or worn is at least 990 million years old and crystallized during a time when there were only primitive algae on the planet, just starting to grow on land. Some diamonds are more ancient, originating from at least 3.2 billion years ago, when the planet was mostly water with no visible land or continents. After forming at such substantial depths, it takes an unusual series of events to bring diamonds to the Earth’s surface.

First, magma containing diamonds, developed over hundreds of millions of years of movement in the mantle, reaches closer to the surface as part of massive “plumes”. Next, it has to be in the right spot at the right time to be blasted to the surface. Then the diamond has to be in the right place at the right time, to be blasted up in magma. Finally, the diamond has to be located within kimberlite rock, where it is preserved for millions of years before being discovered.

In the last few decades, scientists began to notice that while most diamonds have a considerable amount of nitrogen, some larger diamonds contain much less. Typically, these are the Type II diamonds, which were exceptionally rare until discovered in large, high-quality diamonds like the Cullinan. “It’s not just that they’re big that sets them apart,” says Smith. “When you look at these big, high-quality [type II] diamonds, like the Cullinan, there turned out to be something strange about them that makes them more likely to fall into this category that should otherwise be something very rare. This was kinda a long-standing mystery.”

After studying some of these super-deep diamonds found at the Cullinan and Letseng mines in South Africa, researchers discovered that some diamonds had formed deeper in the Earth’s mantle than others. However, Smith’s team found a mineral in their 124-carat specimen that was discovered only six years ago – bridgmanite, the most abundant mineral on Earth that can only exist at the extreme pressures found in the lower mantle, the layer above the Earth’s molten core. Smith concludes that the sparkle of super-deep diamonds is due to the unusual formation process at extreme depths, which causes them to contain a unique mineral.

Despite these scientific insights, mining for diamonds remains a challenging and controversial activity. The pursuit of scientific knowledge must continue, but “the budget of any research project” is comparatively small in comparison to that of the diamond industry. Thus, although mining for diamonds and the geological properties of these stones coincide, ethical considerations need to be taken into account while harvesting these rocks.

Ancient carbon

The formation of the world’s largest and most valuable diamonds is a result of their unusual qualities, according to renowned diamond expert, Evan Smith. Regular diamonds are believed to start as a fluid, most likely ancient seawater trapped deep underground along with sinking oceanic plates. However, super-deep diamonds such as the Cullinan are formed from carbon dissolved within liquid metal, far down in the planet’s interior.

These vanished, subducting plates that are usually heavier, oceanic ones, eventually drift down into the lower mantle, but it has never been confirmed. Smith explains that super-deep diamonds provide important clues to confirm this phenomenon, as they may be composed of what these subducting plates are made of.

In addition to confirming what happens to oceanic plates that end up in our planet’s interior, super-deep diamonds can also reveal the kinds of things that may exist in the lower mantle. Carbon is a key component of these diamonds, but scientists have also discovered a rare super-deep diamond from Juína, Brazil, which contains a pocket of hydrous ringwoodite, a high-pressure form of olivine. Interestingly, this type of ringwoodite contains around 2.5% water and suggests that water is stored lower down in the mantle, where many super-deep diamonds form. Scientists have believed for years that all water on the Earth’s surface ultimately comes from the mantle; however, where it is stored has been up for debate considering olivine does not store water well.

Smith emphasizes that super-deep diamonds aren’t just extraordinarily valuable in monetary terms, but they also provide valuable scientific data about the Earth’s inner workings. “The more scientists learn about them, the clearer it becomes that super-deep diamonds aren’t just extraordinary valuable in monetary terms – without them, many of the processes inside the Earth would have remained hidden from view,” says Smith.

Furthermore, the rough form of diamonds can offer valuable insights into their formation. When diamonds emerge from the Earth, they’re lumpy and coarse, with none of the sparkle they acquire after they’ve been cut and polished. However, these lumps reveal a history of their adventures underground and may provide scientists with a chance to analyze diamonds in their natural state.

Super-deep diamonds offer valuable insights into the inner workings of the Earth. From confirming the process of subduction to understanding the storage of water in the mantle, these unusual diamonds have the potential to unlock a wealth of scientific data. As Evan Smith puts it, “There’s kind of a weird duality, where super-deep diamonds are both extraordinarily scientifically valuable, but also very commercially valuable.”

“The diamond can be chemically etched away by magma, and you end up with these really unusual shapes and intricate features… the natural surfaces that have been sculpted by all these different forces over millions of years. That is unique, and I see a lot of beauty in that.”

A group of scientists from MIT, Harvard University, Caltech and other institutions have made an extraordinary observation of a planet being engulfed by a star. For the first time, researchers have witnessed a star swallowing a planet, which provides crucial insight into how Earth will meet its end. The event observed was a hot Jupiter-size world that spiralled towards a dying star, approximately 1,000 times larger, until it was eventually ingested. This caused the star to grow rapidly and become over 100 times brighter in just 10 days, before gradually fading from view. The novel observation bolsters researchers’ understanding of what Earth’s finale is likely to be. Many astronomers believe that Earth will be subject to a similar fate billions of years down the line when the sun consumes its closest planetary neighbours.

Kishalay De, the lead author of the study and a postdoctoral student at MIT, commented that “all that we see around us, all the stuff that we’ve built around us, this will all be burned in a flash when the Sun decides to evolve and become puffy in 5 billion years”. This means that Earth, along with all of humanity’s creations, will disappear when the sun becomes a red dwarf.

Despite this pessimistic prediction, the researchers involved in the study are thrilled by their groundbreaking observation. The event witnessed allows us to gain a better understanding of the nature of celestial bodies and cosmological phenomena, improving our knowledge of the universe we inhabit. By being able to witness and understand this event, scientists can further their knowledge of how galaxies form and develop over time.

“Wow! That is my first reaction,” Amanda Karakas, an astrophysicist at Monash University in Australia who was not involved in the study, said in an email. “It certainly provides clues as to what will happen to the planets in our solar system and the Earth, many years from now.”

A Star Engulfed a Planet: Discovery by Accident

A team of astrophysicists from the California Institute of Technology have discovered that a star in the Milky Way galaxy, 12,000 light years away in the Aquila constellation, recently consumed a Jupiter-sized planet. The team was initially analyzing data in search of eruptions of binary star systems, in which two stars orbit each other and one brightens as it pulls mass from the other.

However, they noticed that one star became far brighter over roughly a week. When the researchers investigated its chemical composition using observations from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, they found it was surrounded by molecules that can only exist at cold temperatures. After taking infrared observations nearly a year later, the team discovered the star was still shining brightly in the infrared bands of light, even though it was no longer visible to the naked eye, which suggests the star was brightening as a result of merging with something else. This led the team to estimate the total amount of energy released by the star to be 1,000 times smaller than past observations of stars merging with one another, leading Dr. De, a Caltech investigator, to declare “what you have is the star that engulfed the planet.”

The team also suggested that planet engulfments are in fact quite common, though hard to spot, because they are usually much less pronounced than big flares that emanate from stars caused by other violent events such as binary mergers. The infrared data has illuminated these processes, previously obscured by brighter eruptions. Co-author Mansi Kasliwal stated that when “it’s just a planet merging into a star, it’s intrinsically very weak, so it’s harder to find them…When something is harder to find, all we need is a more powerful camera.”

This theory was then put to the test by other members of the team who modelled the observations and reconstructed what may be happening. The team hypothesised that the initial bright flash was the final moments of the planet getting eaten by the star, which led to a blast of the star’s outer layers. This then settled as cold dust over the following year, which accounts for the leftover dust also observed.

While it is challenging to detect these events, researchers are growing increasingly skilled at observing them with updated technology. As this continues to develop, scientists foresee the discovery of many more similar events on a much larger scale. For instance, Dr. Anna Ho, other Caltech astronomer, suggested that a recently discovered dimming star could have been caused by the merger of a smaller star or planet with a much larger one.

Dr. Emily Levesque, an astronomer at the University of Washington, echoed this sentiment, stating that this discovery is “interesting and exciting” for the field. She went on to say that the “idea of planets falling into their stars is not that new…. [Planet engulfment is] something that we do expect to happen, but we don’t know that much about the occurrences … [That is] why getting any observational handle on the candidates is really important for our theoretical understanding and modeling of what’s going on.” The sheer amount of observational data that astrophysicists have access to continues to grow, and this is paving the way for more discoveries of this kind in the years ahead.

Reading is the art of listening to words. It is listening to words written on paper, a mobile screen, boards, or sounds while speaking. Decoding each word creates its own world to explore and experience. People have different opinions on the topic of reading. Each individual perceives it to be different from one another. For some, it is a gateway to imagination and creativity; for others, it is a form of escapism; for others, it is a means for developing a skill, while for a few, it is a space for introspection and growth. The words on the page come to life as we visualize the characters, settings, and events described by the author.

Here are some stories from strangers about their experience with reading:

“Reading for me is formally for the purpose of education and language,” said one person. Reading is a forced experience in life, where one is forced to read to understand topics and learn. It is a must-do for the purpose of education. but moving forward, the word reading took a different shape of its own in different minds.”

“Reading fantasy gives me a lot to imagine, a lot more to think on, and a lot more to vent my energy on,” said Amit, another colleague, whom I interviewed for this story. Fantasy was the genre that was preferred by most people during the course of interviews.

The opportunity to think beyond the boundaries of the present world and to imagine a world with magic, chants, and spells has its own unimaginable pleasure for the minds of readers. At a young age, Amit started his reading journey with J.K. Rowling’s ‘Harry Potter,’ which later moved on to Rick Riordan’s ‘Percy Jackson.’

Amit shared about how much of an obsessive reader he was of Harry Potter. The set of books he would never let go of, even in the midst of exams and work.

Rose talked about Leigh Bardugo’s ‘Six of Crows and Sarah J. Mass’s ‘A Court of Thorns and Roses.’ The feeling of transportation to different realms, immersed in rich, vivid imagery ignites the worlds of imagination. This is how she explained reading a book about an unknown world.

Young adult stories, which are later adapted into movies, are the next thing on the list that people prefer. John Green’s ‘The Fault in Our Stars,’ Stephen Chbosky’s ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower,’ Jennifer Niven’s ‘All the Bright Places,’ and Five Feet Apart’ have topped the list.

When asked as to what they preferred, the movie or the book, most of them picked the movie, while a few chose the book. But the intriguing part of the question was formed when one replied, “I prefer both movies and the book; often I prefer to read the book first, then watch the movie, and later revisit the book again with the revealed images of the characters.”

Sometimes getting a face to imagine and relate the story gives way to incredible fan art.

There are many different reading genres that one can explore and enjoy. A few examples are non-fiction, literary fiction, mystery or thriller, romance, science fiction, historical fiction, young adult, contemporary fiction, horror, biographies, and autobiographies.

To conclude, one can safely say that reading is a form of art that profoundly affects people’s brains, hearts, and souls. It is seen as a skill that many people nurture and celebrate, adding worth and enhancing one’s own life and the one’s world of imagination.

A strong memory is essential to maintaining a healthy and productive lifestyle. Neuroscientists at MIT Sloan have discovered two simple exercises to boost both working and long-term memory. These exercises can be done daily to improve memory.

1. Chunking: Strengthen your working memory

The first exercise is chunking, breaking down long or complex pieces of information into smaller chunks. A phone number like “3-3-2-1-6-7,” can be divided into “33,” “21,” and “67” and given a special meaning. Chunking is also useful for presentations where lengthy talks can be divided into key points with a list of catchphrases to remember them.

2. Space repetition: Strengthen your long-term memory

The second exercise is space repetition, which focuses on memory retention over longer intervals. After learning a fact, it should be repeated out loud a few times, then again after a few hours, days, and weeks. If needed, start the process again to reinforce the memory.

In addition to memory exercises, a healthy lifestyle can also contribute to improved cognitive function. Exercise plays an important role, with cognitive decline being almost twice as common among adults who are inactive. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends at least 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity physical activity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity for adults.

A healthy diet is also essential for cognitive function with a colourful variety of vegetables and plants being recommended. Darker vegetables such as kale and eggplants are particularly beneficial, as are foods containing high levels of polyphenols, such as coffee and dark chocolate in moderation.

Clearing headspace can help reduce information overload. Taking time to think about what is important and what is easily recalled can enable intentional changes to be made in daily life, leading to a reduction in forgetfulness.

According to MIT Sloan neuroscientist, “Chunking and space repetition are two easy exercises that can be done daily to improve the memory strength of an individual especially to help to ward off memory issues later on. Any mentally stimulating activity will boost your brainpower, but it is important to have plenty of exercise, a healthy diet and clear up headspace on regular basis”, she added.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends at least 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity physical activity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity for adults. A healthy diet is also essential for cognitive function with a colourful variety of vegetables and plants being recommended.

Dr. Tara Swart Bieber is a renowned neuroscientist, medical doctor, and senior lecturer at MIT Sloan. She is the author of “The Source: The Secrets of the Universe, the Science of the Brain,” and hosts the podcast Reinvent Yourself with Dr. Tara. She works with leaders to help them achieve mental resilience and peak brain performance. 

Humans will be able to upload consciousness and sensibility in computers by the end of 2023, claims an Indian-origin computer scientist.

Dr Pratik Desai has asked people to start recording their loved ones’ voices, which will “live” even after their death.

In other words, users can create a computerised avatar that resembles their loved one before their death, which can live forever on their screens.

“Start regularly recording your parents, elders and loved ones,” Desai recently wrote on Twitter.

“With enough transcript data, new voice synthesis and video models, there is a 100 per cent chance that they will live with you forever after leaving physical body.

“This should be even possible by end of the year,” he noted.

Desai is not the only one who has claimed this.

Previously, metaverse company Somnium Space offered an AI-based “live forever” mode. It aims to allow individuals to talk with their loved ones in the metaverse.

In an interview with Motherboard, the company’s founder and CEO Artur Sychov said his project will allow people to store the way they talk, move, and sound until after they die, when they can come back from the dead as an online avatar to speak with their relatives.

“Literally, if I die — and I have this data collected — people can come or my kids, they can come in, and they can have a conversation with my avatar, with my movements, with my voice,” Sychov was quoted as saying to Vice.

“You will meet the person. And you would maybe for the first 10 minutes while talking to that person, you would not know that it’s actually AI. That’s the goal,” he added.

Another US-based company Deepbrain has also developed a programme called “Re;memory” which allows users the opportunity to walk down a memorial hall dedicated to a late loved one and even interact with the person “through an actual conversation”. (IANS)

Indian-origin software and robotics engineer, Amit Kshatriya has been appointed as first head of NASA’s new Moon to Mars Program Office at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. The new office aims to carry out NASA’s human exploration activities at the Moon and Mars for the benefit of humanity.

“The Moon to Mars Program Office will help prepare NASA to carry out our bold missions to the Moon and land the first humans on Mars,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, in a statement. “The golden age of exploration is happening right now, and this new office will help ensure that NASA successfully establishes a long-term lunar presence needed to prepare for humanity’s next giant leap to the Red Planet.”

As directed by the 2022 NASA Authorization Act, the Moon to Mars Programme Office focuses on hardware development, mission integration, and risk management functions for programmes critical to the agency’s exploration approach that uses Artemis missions at the Moon to open a new era of scientific discovery and prepare for human missions to Mars.

This includes the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft, supporting ground systems, human landing systems, spacesuits, Gateway, and more related to deep space exploration.

The new office will also lead planning and analysis for long-lead developments to support human Mars missions. The office resides within the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD), and Kshatriya, appointed as deputy associate administrator, will report to its Associate Administrator Jim Free.

Kshatriya previously served as acting deputy associate administrator for Common Exploration Systems Development, providing leadership and integration across several of the programmes that now fall within the new office.

In the new role, Kshatriya is responsible for programme planning and implementation for human missions to the Moon and Mars. He will direct and lead the programmes to ensure Artemis and Mars planning, development, and operations are consistent with ESDMD requirements, and will serve as the single point of focus for risk management.

Kshatriya began his career in the space program in 2003, working as a software engineer, robotics engineer, and spacecraft operator primarily focused on the robotic assembly of the International Space Station.

From 2014 to 2017, he served as a space station flight director, where he led global teams in the operations and execution of the space station during all phases of flight. From 2017 to 2021, he became deputy, and then acting manager, of the ISS Vehicle Office, where he was responsible for sustaining engineering, logistics, and hardware programme management.

In 2021, he was assigned to NASA Headquarters in the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate as an assistant deputy associate administrator, where he was an integral part of the team that returned a spacecraft designed to carry humans to the Moon during the Artemis I mission.

Son of first-generation Indian immigrants to the US, Kshatriya holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and a Master of Arts in Mathematics from The University of Texas at Austin.

He has also been decorated with the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal for actions as the lead flight director for the 50th expedition to the space station, as well as the Silver Snoopy — an award that astronauts bestow for outstanding performance contributing to flight safety — for his actions as lead robotics officer for the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services Dragon demonstration mission to the orbiting laboratory. (IANS)

A new study of human intelligence posits a narrative that may surprise the general public: American IQs rose dramatically over the past century, and now they seem to be falling.

Cognitive abilities declined between 2006 and 2018 across three of four broad domains of intelligence, the study found. Researchers tracked falling scores in logic, vocabulary, visual and mathematical problem-solving and analogies, the latter category familiar to anyone who took the old SAT.

In the 12-year span, IQ scores dipped up to 2 points in the three areas of declining performance. Scores declined across age groups, education levels and genders, with the steepest drops among younger and less-educated test-takers.

IQ scores rose in just one area, spatial reasoning — a set of problems that measure the mind’s ability to analyze three-dimensional objects.

The study, authored by researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Oregon, appears in the May-June issue of the journal Intelligence.

Researchers across the globe have been tracking an apparent decline in human IQs, starting around the turn of the millennium. Theories abound as to why scores are dropping, but the smart money says our cognitive skills may have plateaued, teetering into an era of intellectual lethargy.

If you want to ascribe blame, look no further than this screen.

Cognitive researchers hypothesize that smartphones and smart speakers, autocomplete and artificial intelligence, Wi-Fi and runaway social media have conspired to supplant the higher functions of the human brain. In its quest for labor-saving tech, the world may be dumbing itself down.

“We’re all getting super lazy in our cognition because it’s getting super easy to do everything,” said Ruth Karpinski, a California psychologist who studies IQ. “We’re using Waze and Google Maps to get where we need to go. We’re losing our whole sense of compass.”

The new study joins a growing body of research on something called the Flynn effect. James Flynn, a New Zealand intelligence researcher, tracked a dramatic rise in IQ scores across the 20th century.

How dramatic? If you gave an early-1900s IQ test to a person of average intelligence in 2000, the test-taker would rate in the top 5 percent of the Teddy Roosevelt-era population in cognitive ability.

“IQs rose all over the world, over the course of the century, about 30 points,” said Robert Sternberg, a psychology professor at Cornell who studies intelligence. “To give you a sense of what 30 points means, the average is 100. Usually, gifted would start around 130. So, we’re talking about the difference between an average IQ and a gifted one.”

Until recently, IQ scores had been rising for nearly as long as we had IQ tests. The first tests emerged around 1905, tailored for struggling schoolchildren in France.

Intelligence testing in the United States “took off after World War I” as a selection tool in the military, said Stefan Dombrowski, a psychology professor at Rider University who studies IQ. “We needed some means to distinguish the cannon fodder from officer material.” Army IQ tests evolved into the SAT, which became the dominant college entrance exam, a rite of passage for the upwardly mobile.

Flynn’s research found that IQ scores rose by 3 to 5 points per decade, a finding that implied humans were getting gradually smarter. Cognitive researchers spent decades debating the reasons for the Great Smartening.

“Some people thought it was nutrition, some thought it was schooling, some thought it was better parenting,” Sternberg said. Over the course of the 20th century, Americans generally ate better, stayed in school longer and refined brutalist parenting techniques.

Flynn himself believed rising IQs reflected the growing complexity of human affairs. As farms gave way to factories, horses to cars, typewriters to computers, “it became more complicated to live in the world,” Sternberg said. “And so, IQs went up.”

To some researchers, the Flynn effect undermines the credibility of the IQ. Human intelligence is supposed to be largely innate, inherited, fixed. How, then, to explain the 30-point rise, an arc that seems to have transformed the average American into Wile E. Coyote?

“The level of gain makes it absurd to continue to believe that the tests are measuring some innate, supremely important, fixed quantity that is central to human existence,” Sternberg said.

The Flynn effect suggests that humans can, indeed, learn the skills measured on IQ tests.

“Children, I believe, have gotten better at taking tests,” said Donna Ford, distinguished professor of education and human ecology at the Ohio State University. “They’ve gotten wiser at taking tests because they’re so used to taking tests.”

Test-taking skills suffused American culture well before the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, perhaps the high-water mark of high-stakes testing in American schools.

Another perennial concern with intelligence testing is racial and socioeconomic bias. Some historians argue that the testing movement is rooted in sustaining white privilege.

“When these tests are made,” Ford said, “the items favor white, middle-class populations.”

She cites an old IQ test item that asked children to explain the saying, “One swallow does not make a summer.” Children from low-income urban homes often thought the question alluded to human digestion.

Whatever its flaws, the IQ test remains a fixture in American culture, used in various forms to document cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients, to flag children for special-education instruction and to spare mentally disabled inmates from execution.

“IQ is the most researched construct in all of psychology,” Dombrowski said. Innumerable studies have linked higher or lower IQ scores to better or worse life outcomes, from academic attainment to career success. Colleges and employers often select candidates with high scores on ersatz IQ tests, whereupon the benefits of a high IQ become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And now, with IQ scores appearing to fall, researchers are embracing the notion that the Flynn effect may have run its course.

“The line can’t go up forever,” said Elizabeth Dworak, lead author of the new study. “It’s called the ceiling effect. You eventually hit that threshold.” Dworak is a research assistant professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

Previous research hinted that IQ scores may have plateaued around the turn of the millennium. One Finnish study found IQ scores had dipped by 2 points between 1997 and 2009. A French study found a 4-point drop from 1999 to 2009.

Perhaps human society has reached a cognitive peak. Computers and smartphones are more complex than ever, but human routines are oddly simpler. Generations ago, dishwashers and clothes dryers eased physical labors in daily life. Today, iPhones and the Amazon Echo eliminate mental labors.

“When you can just say, ‘Alexa, do this,’ or, ‘Siri, do that,’ as software becomes more and more sophisticated, there’s less that the human mind has to do,” Sternberg said.

The new study charted a decline in IQ scores using scores from the Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment Project, a free, survey-based online test taken by nearly 400,000 Americans.

The research design was far from perfect. The test-takers were somewhat better-educated than the overall U.S. population. The test wasn’t delivered in a controlled setting. Test subjects “might have been sitting on the bus,” Dworak said.

A 2018 write-up in the Washington Post sent a flood of readers to the test-taking website. “The sample started skewing older,” Dworak said.

If cognitive ability has indeed plateaued, then the next logical question is: When? Dworak would like to analyze scores by birth year.

One day, perhaps, researchers will identify a specific moment — the launch of Wi-Fi, or the rollout of the first smart speaker — when American intelligence turned south.

As U.S. clocks shift forward this weekend, many earthlings will find themselves momentarily confused about what time it is. But scientists say a far larger temporal problem is looming on the horizon: With multiple missions to the moon in the planning phase, it’s time to set a Lunar time standard.

“We need to define a time on the moon,” says Javier Ventura-Traveset of the European Space Agency (ESA). Without it, Ventura-Traveset warns, docking spacecraft could tumble into each other, astronauts might get lost on the lunar surface, and of course, nobody will know when they can take their lunch break.

When humans first traveled to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s, they didn’t worry too much about what time to use, according to Andrew Chaikin, an author and space historian. “They set their watches to Houston time because that’s where mission control was,” he says. More formally, he adds, the Apollo missions used something called “mission elapsed time,” which was a clock that started the second the rocket lifted off from Earth. But in the decades since those missions, time has taken on a new importance here on Earth.

Changing our clocks is a health hazard. Just ask a sleep doctor

While nations set their times according to their position on our rotating ball of rock, all time zones globally are defined against single Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). UTC is set by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Paris, France. It’s created using an ensemble of atomic clocks all over the globe: they feed their times into the Parisian central laboratory, thereby ensuring that every nation ticks in synchrony to within a tiny fraction of a second.

In our modern world, that timing is essential to keeping computer networks humming and markets trading. Perhaps most importantly, time is the cornerstone of the world’s global navigation systems.

Satellites – like those used for GPS – send time signals down to Earth. Because those signals arrive a fraction of a second later than the current time on the ground, the time difference can be used to determine a person’s position on the planet’s surface to astonishing accuracy.

Ventura-Traveset is part of a European effort to create a GPS-like system for the moon. Known as “Moonlight,” the system would use a small number of satellites to create a communications and navigation network around a crewed landing site on the lunar surface.

Researchers say time is an illusion. So why are we all obsessed with it?

Currently, lunar missions use UTC like everyone else, and that might seem like the simplest solution, Ventura-Traveset says. But in fact, he believes it’ll be tricky to use UTC on the moon. Part of the problem is the sheer distance between Earth and the moon, which means a timing signal from Earth would take over a second to get from earth to the moon – an eternity by the standards of today’s atomic clocks.

But there’s an even more fundamental problem: Einstein’s theory of relativity states that time actually ticks differently in different parts of space. Specifically, the moon’s lower gravity and its motion relative to Earth cause time to pass around 56 microseconds faster each earth day.

This 56 microseconds is not some abstract concept: Every day, astronauts living on the moon will age 56 microseconds more quickly than they will on Earth. That’s far too small a time gap to make a difference in a human lifespan, but for navigation, that kind of time difference is enormous, Ventura-Traveset says.

To get accurate positions, “you need the level of nanoseconds,” he says. In other words, the different rate of time flow on the moon means that clocks on the lunar surface cannot simply be run from Earth. Instead, he thinks a set of lunar clocks will need to be created that keep a special “moon” time.

Given the moon’s proximity to Earth, Ventura-Traveset thinks that it may make sense to use some additional calculations to keep lunar time in sync with UTC, to give the illusion of continuity between the Earth and the moon. But as humans explore further into the solar system, he believes it will be necessary to create completely separate timescales. “If you are on Mars, or you are even farther away, probably you have your own time,” he says.

ESA is working with NASA to figure out how to create standards for communications and navigation on the moon. In a statement, NASA told NPR that “subject matter experts throughout the international community are discussing an approach to provide recommendations to the International Astronomical Union for lunar reference frame and time systems.”

Ventura-Traveset hopes ESA’s proposal for a separate lunar time will ultimately be accepted by other space agencies around the world. “It’s fascinating times,” he muses. (Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday at NPR)

Newswise — Early in the formation of Earth, an ocean of magma covered the planet’s surface and stretched thousands of miles deep into its core. The rate at which that “magma ocean” cooled affected the formation of the distinct layering within the Earth and the chemical makeup of those layers.

Previous research estimated that it took hundreds of million years for that magma ocean to solidify, but new research from Florida State University published in Nature Communications narrows these large uncertainties down to less than just a couple of million years.

“This magma ocean has been an important part of Earth’s history, and this study helps us answer some fundamental questions about the planet,” said Mainak Mookherjee, an associate professor of geology in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science.

When magma cools, it forms crystals. Where those crystals end up depends on how viscous the magma is and the relative density of the crystals. Crystals that are denser are likely to sink and thus change the composition of the remaining magma. The rate at which magma solidifies depends on how viscous it is. Less viscous magma will lead to faster cooling, whereas a magma ocean with thicker consistency will take a longer time to cool.

Like this research, previous studies have used fundamental principles of physics and chemistry to simulate the high pressures and temperatures in the Earth’s deep interior. Scientists also use experiments to simulate these extreme conditions. But these experiments are limited to lower pressures, which exist at shallower depths within the Earth. They don’t fully capture the scenario that existed in the planet’s early history, where the magma ocean extended to depths where pressure is likely to be three times higher than what experiments can reproduce.

To overcome those limitations, Mookherjee and collaborators ran their simulation for up to six months in the high-performance computing facility at FSU as well as at a National Science Foundation computing facility. This eliminated much of the statistical uncertainties in previous work.

“Earth is a big planet, so at depth, pressure is likely to be very high,” said Suraj Bajgain, a former post-doctoral researcher at FSU who is now a visiting assistant professor at Lake Superior State University. “Even if we know the viscosity of magma at the surface, that doesn’t tell us the viscosity hundreds of kilometers below it. Finding that is very challenging.”

The research also helps explain the chemical diversity found within the Earth’s lower mantle. Samples of lava — the name for magma after it breaks through the surface of the Earth — from ridges at the bottom of the ocean floor and volcanic islands like Hawaii and Iceland crystallize into basaltic rock with similar appearances but distinct chemical compositions, a situation that has long perplexed Earth scientists.

“Why do they have distinct chemistry or chemical signals?” Mookherjee said. “Since the magma originates from underneath the Earth’s surface, that means the source of the magma there has chemical diversity. How did that chemical diversity begin in the first place, and how has it survived over geological time?”

The starting point of chemical diversity in the mantle can be successfully explained by a magma ocean in the Earth’s early history with low viscosity. Less viscous magma led to the rapid separation of the crystals suspended within it, a process often referred to as fractional crystallization. That created a mix of different chemistry within the magma, rather than a uniform composition.

Doctoral student Aaron Wolfgang Ashley from FSU as well as Dipta Ghosh and Bijaya Karki from the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Louisiana State University were co-authors of this paper.  This work was funded by the National Science Foundation.

If six galaxies discovered by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are any indication, either the universe is much older than it has been described to be or galaxies form much quicker than what the current scientific wisdom says.

A paper detailing the JWST findings was published by Nature on February 22. In the three days since its publication the scientific community is agog with questions over what all this means.

In either case, the JWST discovery is threatening to potentially upend astrophysics unlike ever before. What has thrown off the scientific community is that the six galaxies came into existence between just about 500 million years and 700 million years after the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago. Typically, galaxies take billions of years to form but if the ones discovered by the JWST formed so quickly, there is a fundamental problem. The idea that the universe could have produced fully-formed galaxies in its own infancy is astounding.

Primordial galaxies of the kind discovered are about ten times bigger than the Milky Way which is confounding scientists. What this discovery can potentially do is force the scientific community to fundamentally rewrite the theory of the creation of the universe. One way to look at the discovery is that if the theory that galaxies take billions of years to form holds true, then the universe ought to have formed much earlier than its 13.7-billion-year-old age. If not that, then galaxies form much more rapidly than so far theorized. So far it appears as if only one of the two can be true.

However, a third explanation being offered is that the six galaxies are an optical illusion. They are, in fact, baby galaxies whose sizes seemed dramatically enlarged because of gravity as a magnifying glass. Gravity can bend space and time to create a magnifying lens. But then there are those scientists who think that the six are monster black holes.

Another finding that is causing a great deal of excitement is that the mass of stars within each of these objects totals to several billion times larger than that of our sun. At least one of the six contains mass that is 100 billion times the mass of our sun, making it much more massive than the Milky Way which contains stars whose mass total 60 billion times that of the sun.

It is, of course, still early days to throw out the old physics about the universe but the discovery is certainly compelling the scientific community to at least consider the possibility of revising the theory of creation almost entirely.

Whatever may turn out to be the case eventually, the $10-billion JWST has been a spectacular success in revealing structures and phenomena across the universe in such breathtaking resolution as never thought possible. (IndiCa News)

Newswise —Arjun Krishnan, Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics at the Center for Health AI, University of Colorado Anschutz, on behalf of his research team, Krishnan Lab, received the FASEB DataWorks! Prize, Significant Achievement Award.

The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) and the Office of Data Science Strategy at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced the award this week. The prize showcases research teams’ exemplary achievements in biological and biomedical research that were made possible through data sharing and reuse.

As inaugural winners of the DataWorks! Prize, Krishnan’s research team received a $12,500 prize. The team’s winning project focused on methods that address unstructured metadata and missing metadata that are barriers to discovering and reusing public omics data. They will present their project and celebrate their achievement at an upcoming symposium on April 25.

Sharing and reusing scientific data openly has tremendous potential to catalyze new scientific discoveries. Exemplary data management and sharing requires innovative and interdisciplinary collaboration to maximize impact.

The DataWorks! Prize, a component of FASEB DataWorks!, is a partnership between FASEB and NIH to incentivize innovative practices and increase community engagement around data sharing and reuse. A panel of NIH officials selected a total of 11 research teams as winners.

With community engagement as a key part of the DataWorks! Prize, FASEB recognized two teams with People’s Choice awards based on crowd voting. More than 2,150 votes were cast from the community.

2022 DataWorks! Prize Winners

Grand Prize: $100,000

Team: BrainChart Project: Brain Charts for the Human Lifespan

Team: National Covid Cohort Collaborative Project: Democratizing Access to Clinical Data

Distinguished Achievement Award: $50,000

Team: PhysioNet Challenges Project: The PhysioNet Challenges Data Science Competitions

Team: Monarch Initiative Project: Using All Organisms for Diagnostics and Discovery

Team: NeuroMorpho.Org Project: A Public Repository of Neuronal and Glial Morphology

Team: The GenomeArk Project: The GenomeArk: High-quality Reference Genomes

Exemplary Achievement Award: $25,000

Team: Allen Institute for Brain Science Project: The Cell Type Knowledge Explorer

Significant Achievement Awards: $12,500

Team: VEuPathDB Project: VEuPathDB: New Discoveries Through Data Reuse

Team: Krishnan Lab Project: Removing Metadata Barriers to Promote Data Reuse

Team: Vascular Model Repository Project: The Vascular Model Repository Open-data Model

Team: MIT Critical Data Project: Improving Health Research Diversity with MIMIC (updated title)

People’s Choice Award

Team: GenomeArk Project: The GenomeArk: High-quality Reference Genomes

Team: VEuPathDB Project: VEuPathDB: New Discoveries Through Data Reuse

An annual challenge, the DataWorks! Prize is a component of FASEB DataWorks!, which brings the biological and biomedical research communities together to advance human health through data sharing and reuse. Learn more about FASEB DataWorks! and the DataWorks! Prize.

About FASEB

FASEB is comprised of 27 scientific member societies with 115,000 members, making it the largest coalition of biomedical research associations in the United States. FASEB’s mission is to advance health and well-being by promoting research and education in biological and biomedical sciences through collaborative advocacy and service to member societies and their members. Visit faseb.org for more information.

(AP) — Astronomers have discovered what appear to be massive galaxies dating back to within 600 million years of the Big Bang, suggesting the early universe may have had a stellar fast-track that produced these “monsters.”

While the new James Webb Space Telescope has spotted even older galaxies, dating to within a mere 300 million years of the beginning of the universe, it’s the size and maturity of these six apparent mega-galaxies that stun scientists. They reported their findings Wednesday.

Lead researcher Ivo Labbe of Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology and his team expected to find little baby galaxies this close to the dawn of the universe — not these whoppers.

“While most galaxies in this era are still small and only gradually growing larger over time,” he said in an email, “there are a few monsters that fast-track to maturity. Why this is the case or how this would work is unknown.”

Each of the six objects looks to weigh billions of times more than our sun. In one of them, the total weight of all its stars may be as much as 100 billion times greater than our sun, according to the scientists, who published their findings in the journal Nature.

Yet these galaxies are believed to be extremely compact, squeezing in as many stars as our own Milky Way, but in a relatively tiny slice of space, according to Labbe.

Labbe said he and his team didn’t think the results were real at first — that there couldn’t be galaxies as mature as the Milky Way so early in time — and they still need to be confirmed. The objects appeared so big and bright that some members of the team thought they had made a mistake.

“We were mind-blown, kind of incredulous,” Labbe said. The Pennsylvania State University’s Joel Leja, who took part in the study, calls them “universe breakers.”

“The revelation that massive galaxy formation began extremely early in the history of the universe upends what many of us had thought was settled science,” Leja said in a statement. “It turns out we found something so unexpected it actually creates problems for science. It calls the whole picture of early galaxy formation into question.”

These galaxy observations were among the first data set that came from the $10 billion Webb telescope, launched just over a year ago. NASA and the European Space Agency’s Webb is considered the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, coming up on the 33rd anniversary of its launch.

Unlike Hubble, the bigger and more powerful Webb can peer through clouds of dust with its infrared vision and discover galaxies previously unseen. Scientists hope to eventually observe the first stars and galaxies formed following the creation of the universe 13.8 billion years ago.

The researchers still are awaiting official confirmation through sensitive spectroscopy, careful to call these candidate massive galaxies for now. Leja said it’s possible that a few of the objects might not be galaxies, but obscured supermassive black holes.

While some may prove to be smaller, “odds are good at least some of them will turn out to be” galactic giants, Labbe said. “The next year will tell us.”

One early lesson from Webb is “to let go of your expectations and be ready to be surprised,” he said.

We have a new exoplanet to one day scour for potential signs of life. Just 31 light-years away, astronomers have identified an incredibly rare Earth-sized world orbiting at a distance from its star that should be hospitable to life as we know it. If, that is, the exoplanet itself has the right conditions to be conducive to life’s emergence.

That information isn’t available to us yet, but the world represents a promising candidate for a future search for biosignatures on nearby, Earth-mass exoplanets.

The search for exoplanets – that is, extrasolar planets, those outside our Solar System – is hobbled by the limitations of our current technology. Make no mistake, that technology is amazing; but our primary methods for finding exoplanets are way better at finding large worlds than small ones.

That’s because they rely on indirect signs, the effects an exoplanet has on its host star. The transit method detects the very faint, regular dips in starlight as an exoplanet orbits between us and its star; and the radial velocity method detects minute changes in wavelength of light as the star is very, very slightly moved around on the spot by the gravitational interaction with the exoplanet.

So, while more than 5,200 exoplanets have been confirmed at time of writing, fewer than 1.5 percent of those have masses below that of two Earths.

And of those, perhaps a dozen are orbiting their stars at a distance where temperatures could allow for liquid water on the surface – not so hot that it burns off, nor so cold that it freezes.

A location in this so-called habitable zone is the first step in narrowing down whether a world may or may not be hospitable to life. And this is what a team of astronomers led by Diana Kossakowski of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Germany have discovered a nearby red dwarf star Wolf 1069.

The newly discovered exoplanet, 1.36 times the mass of Earth, has been named Wolf 1069b. “When we analyzed the data of the star Wolf 1069, we discovered a clear, low-amplitude signal of what appears to be a planet of roughly Earth mass,” Kossakowski says.

“It orbits the star within 15.6 days at a distance equivalent to one-fifteenth of the separation between the Earth and the Sun.”

That would definitely be too hot for habitability if Wolf 1069 was a star like the Sun, but red dwarfs are much smaller and cooler than our home star. This means that their habitable zones are significantly closer to the star than our Solar System’s habitable zone, which just extends from around Venus and just reaches Mars.

Although Wolf 1069b is 15 times closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun, the radiation it receives is around 65 percent of what Earth receives from the Sun.

At this level, a bare, rocky Wolf 1069b similar to Mercury should have a temperature around -23 degrees Celsius (-9.4 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s way too cold for liquid water; but, without an atmosphere, liquid water would turn to vapor anyway.

Obviously there’s a lot more that goes into habitability than just the right proximity to the star. An atmosphere could trap heat and lift the average temperature, but it would need to be a nice, thick atmosphere. Mars has an atmosphere, and its mean temperature sits at -65 degrees Celsius.

The red planet’s atmosphere is also rather flimsy, and this is thought to be because it doesn’t have a protective global magnetic field like Earth does. ( Venus doesn’t have an internally generated magnetic field, either, but its interaction with the solar wind creates an external one. It’s a Venus thing.)

An internally generated global magnetic field is the result of rotating, convecting, and conducting fluids within the planet’s core that converts kinetic energy into magnetic energy to create a magnetic field. And it’s possible that Wolf 1069b has one of these.

“Our computer simulations show that about 5 percent of all evolving planetary systems around low-mass stars, such as Wolf 1069, end up with a single detectable planet,” says astronomer Remo Burn of the MPIA.

“The simulations also reveal a stage of violent encounters with planetary embryos during the construction of the planetary system, leading to occasional catastrophic impacts.”

These encounters would heat the young world, suggesting that the core of Wolf 1069b is still molten, like Earth’s core, and therefore could be generating a magnetic field.

There’s just one more problem. You know how the same side of the Moon is always facing Earth? That’s called tidal locking, and it’s the result of gravitational “brakes” being applied to a body’s rotation if it’s in close orbit with a more massive one.

Because the habitable zone of red dwarf stars is so close to the star, most potentially habitable red dwarf exoplanets are tidally locked. That means one side is in permanent day, and the other in permanent night.

All, however, is not lost. Research shows that such worlds can still be habitable, particularly around the terminator, the twilit line between night and day. A simulated temperature map of Wolf 1069b, however, shows that liquid water is most likely to be present on the region directly facing the star.

Unfortunately, we’re going to have to wait to find out more: Wolf 1069b doesn’t pass between us and its star, which means we currently have no way of probing it for an atmosphere.

“We’ll probably have to wait another ten years for this,” Kossakowski says. “Though it’s crucial we develop our facilities considering most of the closest potentially habitable worlds are detected via the radial velocity method only.”

It’s been 13 years in the making, but Dr. David Sinclair and his colleagues have finally answered the question of what drives aging. In a study published Jan. 12 in Cell, Sinclair, a professor of genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard Medical School, describes a groundbreaking aging clock that can speed up or reverse the aging of cells.

Scientists studying aging have debated what drives the process of senescence in cells—and primarily focused on mutations in DNA that can, over time, mess up a cell’s normal operations and trigger the process of cell death. But that theory wasn’t supported by the fact that older people’s cells often were not riddled with mutations, and that animals or people harboring a higher burden of mutated cells don’t seem to age prematurely.

Sinclair therefore focused on another part of the genome, called the epigenome. Since all cells have the same DNA blueprint, the epigenome is what makes skin cells turn into skin cells and brain cells into brain cells. It does this by providing different instructions to different cells for which genes to turn on, and which to keep silent. Epigenetics is similar to the instructions dressmakers rely on from patterns to create shirts, pants, or jackets. The starting fabric is the same, but the pattern determines what shape and function the final article of clothing takes. With cells, the epigenetic instructions lead to cells with different physical structures and functions in a process called differentiation.

In the Cell paper, Sinclair and his team report that not only can they age mice on an accelerated timeline, but they can also reverse the effects of that aging and restore some of the biological signs of youthfulness to the animals. That reversibility makes a strong case for the fact that the main drivers of aging aren’t mutations to the DNA, but miscues in the epigenetic instructions that somehow go awry. Sinclair has long proposed that aging is the result of losing critical instructions that cells need to continue functioning, in what he calls the Information Theory of Aging. “Underlying aging is information that is lost in cells, not just the accumulation of damage,” he says. “That’s a paradigm shift in how to think about aging. “

His latest results seem to support that theory. It’s similar to the way software programs operate off hardware, but sometimes become corrupt and need a reboot, says Sinclair. “If the cause of aging was because a cell became full of mutations, then age reversal would not be possible,” he says. “But by showing that we can reverse the aging process, that shows that the system is intact, that there is a backup copy and the software needs to be rebooted.”

In the mice, he and his team developed a way to reboot cells to restart the backup copy of epigenetic instructions, essentially erasing the corrupted signals that put the cells on the path toward aging. They mimicked the effects of aging on the epigenome by introducing breaks in the DNA of young mice. (Outside of the lab, epigenetic changes can be driven by a number of things, including smoking, exposure to pollution and chemicals.) Once “aged” in this way, within a matter of weeks Sinclair saw that the mice began to show signs of older age—including grey fur, lower body weight despite unaltered diet, reduced activity, and increased frailty.

The rebooting came in the form of a gene therapy involving three genes that instruct cells to reprogram themselves—in the case of the mice, the instructions guided the cells to restart the epigenetic changes that defined their identity as, for example, kidney and skin cells, two cell types that are prone to the effects of aging. These genes came from the suite of so-called Yamanaka stem cells factors—a set of four genes that Nobel scientist Shinya Yamanaka in 2006 discovered can turn back the clock on adult cells to their embryonic, stem cell state so they can start their development, or differentiation process, all over again. Sinclair didn’t want to completely erase the cells’ epigenetic history, just reboot it enough to reset the epigenetic instructions. Using three of the four factors turned back the clock about 57%, enough to make the mice youthful again.

“We’re not making stem cells, but turning back the clock so they can regain their identity,” says Sinclair. “I’ve been really surprised by how universally it works. We haven’t found a cell type yet that we can’t age forward and backward.”

Rejuvenating cells in mice is one thing, but will the process work in humans? That’s Sinclair’s next step, and his team is already testing the system in non-human primates. The researchers are attaching a biological switch that would allow them to turn the clock on and off by tying the activation of the reprogramming genes to an antibiotic, doxycycline. Giving the animals doxycycline would start reversing the clock, and stopping the drug would halt the process. Sinclair is currently lab-testing the system with human neurons, skin, and fibroblast cells, which contribute to connective tissue.

In 2020, Sinclair reported that in mice, the process restored vision in older animals; the current results show that the system can apply to not just one tissue or organ, but the entire animal. He anticipates eye diseases will be the first condition used to test this aging reversal in people, since the gene therapy can be injected directly into the eye area.

“We think of the processes behind aging, and diseases related to aging, as irreversible,” says Sinclair. “In the case of the eye, there is the misconception that you need to regrow new nerves. But in some cases the existing cells are just not functioning, so if you reboot them, they are fine. It’s a new way to think about medicine.”

That could mean that a host of diseases—including chronic conditions such as heart disease and even neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s—could be treated in large part by reversing the aging process that leads to them. Even before that happens, the process could be an important new tool for researchers studying these diseases. In most cases, scientists rely on young animals or tissues to model diseases of aging, which doesn’t always faithfully reproduce the condition of aging. The new system “makes the mice very old rapidly, so we can, for example, make human brain tissue the equivalent off what you would find in a 70 year old and use those in the mouse model to study Alzheimer’s disease that way,” Sinclair says.

Beyond that, the implications of being able to age and rejuvenate tissues, organs, or even entire animals or people are mind-bending. Sinclair has rejuvenated the eye nerves multiple times, which raises the more existential question for bioethicists and society of considering what it would mean to continually rewind the clock on aging.

This study is just the first step in redefining what it means to age, and Sinclair is the first to acknowledge that it raises more questions than answers. “We don’t understand how rejuvenation really works, but we know it works,” he says. “We can use it to rejuvenate parts of the body and hopefully make medicines that will be revolutionary. Now, when I see an older person, I don’t look at them as old, I just look at them as someone whose system needs to be rebooted. It’s no longer a question of if rejuvenation is possible, but a question of when.”

The quest to find another world, similar to that of Earth with resources that could sustain human life has remained the foundation of the global exoplanet hunt. Astronomers from across the world have been looking to find unique worlds outside our Solar System, where humanity could transcend in the future.

2022 was a year of great success in that direction as astronomers from around the world managed to find over 200 planets outside our solar system and some of them are primed for deeper observations by the James Webb Space Telescope and others. When the year started, the exoplanet catalogue had fewer than 5,000 planets since the planetary survey beyond our Solar System began.

“We started the year with fewer than 5,000 confirmed exoplanets. We end with 5,235 known worlds. About 4% are rocky planets like Earth or Mars. What will the new year bring? More planets!” Nasa said in a tweet.

The exoplanet catalogues so far have a varied range of worlds when it comes to their composition and characteristics. These include small, rocky worlds like Earth, gas giants many times larger than Jupiter, and hot Jupiters in scorchingly close orbits around their stars.

Meanwhile, the list also includes “super-Earths,” which are possible rocky worlds bigger than our own, and “mini-Neptunes,” smaller versions of our system’s Neptune.

The latest planet to be discovered in 2022 is HD 109833 b, which is a Neptune-like exoplanet that orbits a G-type star. According to Nasa, Its mass is 8.69 Earths and it takes 9.2 days to complete one orbit of its star. It was discovered using the transit method as astronomers looked at the star and noticed a dip in its light every time the object came in front of it.

Astronomers also found two exoplanets orbiting a red dwarf star that is unique in their composition and was unlike any other discovered before. These two planets are filled with water and located in a planetary system 218 light-years away in the constellation Lyra. The planets, which are about one and a half times the size of the Earth, were discovered along with their host star by Nasa’s Kepler Space Telescope.

Newswise — The idea that climate change and geological events can shape evolution isn’t a new one: anyone who’s heard of dinosaurs knows that a big change in the environment (like, say, a meteor hitting the Earth 66 million years ago and causing a chain reaction of storms, earthquakes, cold, and darkness) can dictate how animals live, die, and evolve. But while it’s a generally agreed-upon concept, scientists rely on painstakingly precise data to map how these sorts of changes affect the course of evolution for even one species. A new study in PNAS compiles data on more than 3,000 species to show how climate and geologic changes across Asia over the last 66 million years have shaped the evolution of the continent’s mammals.

Asia is the world’s largest continent, and it’s home to just about every type of biome. “Asia has desert up north, tropical forests in the south, temperate forests in the east,” says Anderson Feijó, the study’s lead author, a researcher at the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and a former research fellow at Chicago’s Field Museum. “My idea was to understand how all these regions were connected and how we ended up with different species of mammals in different areas.”

“To understand historical events, scientists look for associations with their timing and location– when and where did species appear, and what else was happening then and there? This paper does that for the entire Asian mammal fauna,” says Bruce Patterson, a curator emeritus at the Field Museum and co-author of the paper.

Asia doesn’t have the most mammal species in the world, or the most different kinds of habitats, but “what makes it special is its connections,” says Patterson. “It’s a crossroads for connections to North America, Africa, Europe, and Australasia.” The researchers wanted to see how different mammals came to Asia and left from there over time, as well as how new species evolved, and determine whether they could link these changes in Asia’s mammal diversity with changes in the region’s geology (like shifting tectonic plates forming mountains) and climate.

“One big step of this project was building a very good understanding of the distribution of mammal species. And this took quite a while because I needed to go through the literature, public databases, and museum collections,” says Feijó. Museums like the Field and the National Zoological Museum of China house collections that include preserved animal specimens and fossils coupled with info about where the animal was found and when. They also used family trees showing how different species are related to shed light on the bigger picture of mammalian evolution. Combining both info, Feijó and his colleagues were able to map where different species have been found over time. 

Overall, the researchers found clear links between changes in the Earth’s climate over the past 66 million years and the mammals found in different regions of Asia. As the climate slowly warmed and cooled, some species were driven extinct or moved to new habitats, while others thrived. Similarly, tectonic plate activity, like when the Indian subcontinent inched towards the rest of Asia and eventually crashed into it, buckling the land and forming the Himalayas, played a big role in the movement, extinction, and evolution of mammals.

The researchers were even able to explore the effects of climate and geology on the evolution of individual species; Feijó gives the example of the pikas. Pikas look like their close relatives, rabbits, but have small rounded ears, and they’re adapted to live in high altitudes with low oxygen levels. “Pikas originated around 15 million years ago on the Tibetan Plateau, and we believe that the formation of this plateau was a big driver of the evolution of this group,” says Feijó. “Then from there, they colonized the lowlands of northern Asia and then invaded North America, where they’re still found today.”

Overall, “this paper made very clear that everything is connected.”says Feijó. “We are seeing a lot of climate change happen today, and this paper shows that every geological climate change event has led to either diversification or extinction or migration, and we can expect the same thing to happen in the future.” 

Not just SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the US space agency also thinks that humans could stay on the Moon for a longer period in this decade.

Howard Hu, who leads the Orion lunar spacecraft programme for NASA, told the BBC that the Artemis missions “enable us to have a sustainable platform and transportation system that allows us to learn how to operate in that deep space environment”.

“We’re going to be sending people down to the surface and they’re going to be living on that surface and doing science,” Hu was quoted as saying in the report that came out on Sunday.

“It’s really going to be very important for us to learn a little bit beyond our Earth’s orbit and then take a big step when we go to Mars,” he added.

Five days into the 25.5-day Artemis I mission, Orion continues on its trajectory toward the Moon.

On Sunday, the uncrewed Orion had traveled 232,683 miles from Earth and was 39,501 miles from the Moon, cruising at 371 miles per hour.

“It’s the first step we’re taking to long-term deep space exploration, for not just the United States but for the world,” said Hu.

“I mean, we are going back to the Moon, we’re working towards a sustainable programme and this is the vehicle that will carry the people that will land us back on the Moon again,” the NASA official noted.

The US space agency last week sent its next-generation rocket into space as part of its ambitious, uncrewed Artemis I Moon mission which faced two failed attempts amid years of delays and billions of dollars spent.

The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida and sent the Orion spacecraft on its way to Moon’s orbit.

The Orion will continue onward to the Moon, which it will orbit for several days before its likely return to the Earth on December 11.

In 2025, NASA plans to launch the first crewed Moon landings since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. That will include the first woman and the first person of colour to walk on the Moon.

Artemis I will provide a foundation for human exploration in deep space and demonstrate NASA’s commitment and capability to extend human existence to the Moon and beyond. (IANS)

Researchers from School of Nanosciences and Molecular Medicine at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham here have won a patent in the US and Australia for a novel nanomedicine that holds great promise for early detection and treatment of liver cirrhosis and liver tumour.

The invention is the outcome of a research project funded by the Nanobiotechnology Task Force of Deptartment of Biotechnology of Government of India.

Shantikumar V. Nair and Manzoor Koyakutty from Amrita School of Nanosciences and Molecular Medicine in Kochi led a team to create a special type of nanomedicine that responds to radio wave signals sent from outside the body.

Once the nanoparticles are injected into a tumour, they can be heated up using external, medically approved radio waves. Doctors can visualise the tumour using an MRI machine and burn it off in a controlled manner.

Amrita researchers have demonstrated that the novel technology can be used for early detection of liver cirrhosis and liver tumour, early-stage image-guided treatment of liver tumour using radio-frequency ablation therapy as well as labelling and tracking the movement of stem cells inside the body after stem-cell transplantation to assess how effective the therapy has been.

Koyakutty said that they have made a unique nanomedicine that can be used for medical imaging, combined with drug delivery.

“Its particles are made of synthetically prepared calcium phosphate, a biomineral present in our bones. Generally, chemically prepared inorganic nanoparticles cause safety issues when used as nanomedicines. However, as a biomineral, calcium phosphate is biocompatible and biodegradable, hence totally safe for human use,” said Koyakutty.

Shantikumar V. Nair said that they are currently investigating cancer-immunotherapy application potential of these nanoparticles with support of Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) and an Indo-Swiss collaboration with Ludwig Cancer Research Institute, University of Lausanne, and University of Geneva, Switzerland.

“We are now testing regulatory safety studies in large animal models. We expect to conduct human trials of the nanomedicine within the next one year,” Nair said. (IANS)

Over the years rock carvings of a previously unknown civilisation have been found in India’s western state of Maharashtra. Now, a cave in the same region is promising to shed more light on the creators of these prehistoric artworks and their lives. The BBC Marathi’s Mayuresh Konnur reports.

The cave, located around 10km (six miles) away from Koloshi village in the Konkan region of western Maharashtra, was discovered by a group of researchers last year. Excavations earlier this year revealed several stone tools in the cave that date back tens of thousands of years.

“Nowhere in the world can we find rock art of this kind,” says Dr Tejas Garge, who heads Maharashtra’s archaeology department. Archaeologists believe these artefacts can help us find out more about the way our ancestors lived.

The cave, which is situated in a secluded forest in Sindhudurg, was discovered by researchers who were studying rock carvings in nearby areas. Excavation work was conducted in two rounds, during which archaeologists dug two trenches inside the cave. Several big and small stone tools dating back to the Mesolithic period – also called the middle stone age – have been found.

“The microliths, or the small stone tools, date back to around 10,000 years, whereas the larger tools could be around 20,000 years old,” says Rutivij Apte, who has been researching the Konkan petroglyphs and was part of the excavation team.

Dr. Parth Chauhan, an archaeologist, says chemical processes are used to analyse any residue that might be present on the edges of the artefacts. This can help determine what the object was used for.

“It will take a couple of months to find out the exact time period these stone tools belong to. But right now, we can say that these artefacts are between 10,000 to 48,000 years old.”

Maharashtra’s laterite-rich Konkan plateau where this cave was discovered is also a treasure trove of prehistoric art. In the past explorers have discovered rock carvings of animals, birds, human figures and geometrical designs hidden under layers of soil in several villages here.

So far, 1700 petroglyphs – or rock carvings – have been found at 132 locations in 76 villages in Sindhudurg and nearby Ratnagiri district.

Saili Palande Datar, a Pune-based art historian and writer, says these carvings offer great insights into the life and habits of prehistoric man.

She gives the example of an iconic rock carving of a human-figure found near Barsu village in Ratnagiri district.

The carving is embossed on a rock and seems to be of a male figure who is holding what appears to be tigers and other wild animals in both hands.

“There is an amazing sense of symmetry in this carving, which points to a high level of skill. The picture also depicts the relationship man shared with animals,” Ms Datar says.

He says that seals of the Harappan civilisation – one of the oldest civilisations in human history that flourished in the Indian subcontinent – also depict the close relationship man shared with animals.

“The seals have images of large animals like tigers and buffaloes and of man hunting animals,” she says.

Experts say that mysteries around these prehistoric rock carvings are far from being solved, but a Unesco tag – natural and cultural landmarks from around the world are singled out for their “outstanding universal value” to humanity – can help preserve them for generations.

Eight rock carving sites in the Konkan region are already a part of Unesco’s tentative list of World Heritage sites, which is the first step towards getting the tag for any culturally-significant site.

The planet, HIP 65426 B, which is about six to 12 times the mass of Jupiter, is a gas giant, meaning it has no rocky surface, and could not be habitable.

For the first time, NASA’s powerful James Webb Telescope took direct images of an exoplanet, HIP 65426B, outside our solar system.

The planet which is about six to 12 times the mass of Jupiter, is a gas giant, meaning it has no rocky surface, and could not be habitable. According to NASA, it is a young planet, as they go about 15 to 20 million years old, compared to our Earth which is about 4.5 billion years old.

An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside our solar system that usually orbits another star in our galaxy. Most of the exoplanets discovered so far are in the relatively small region of the Milky Way galaxy. “Small” refers to a region within thousands of light-years from our solar system.

It was discovered by astronomers in 2017 using the SPHERE instrument on the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope in Chile which took images using the short infrared wavelength of light, while James Webb’s telescope used longer wavelengths which helps in revealing ground-based details, which ground-based telescopes cannot.

Sasha Hinkley, an associate professor of physics at the University of Exeter in the UK said, “This is a transformative moment, not only for Webb but for astronomy in general.”

Taking direct images of exoplanets is challenging as the host stars are much brighter than the planets. The HIP 65426 B is about 100 times farther from the host star compared to Earth’s distance from the Sun, making it distant enough for Webb to easily separate the planet from the star in the images.

The exoplanet spotted by James Webb is over 10,000 times fainter than the host star in the near-infrared and about a few thousand times fainter in mid-infrared, but Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) are equipped with conographs, which act as tiny masks that block, suppress the light from the host star, helping the giant powerful telescope to take direct images.

“Obtaining this image felt like digging for space treasure,” said Aarynn Carter, a researcher who led the analysis of images.

The researchers have been analysing the images and the data and the journal will be peer-reviewed, but NASA believes that the first capture of a distant world already hints at possibilities to study far-away planets.

Newswise — COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new analysis of a beaver anklebone fossil found in Montana suggests the evolution of semi-aquatic beavers may have occurred at least 7 million years earlier than previously thought, and happened in North America rather than Eurasia.

In the study, Ohio State University evolutionary biologist Jonathan Calede describes the find as the oldest known amphibious beaver in the world and the oldest amphibious rodent in North America. He named the newly discovered species Microtheriomys articulaquaticus.

Calede’s findings resulted from comparing measurements of the new species’ anklebone to about 340 other rodent specimens to categorize how it moved around in its environment – which indicated this animal was a swimmer. The Montana-based bone was determined to be 30 million years old – the oldest previously identified semi-aquatic beaver lived in France 23 million years ago.

Beavers and other rodents can tell us a lot about mammalian evolution, said Calede, an assistant professor of evolution, ecology and organismal biology at Ohio State’s Marion campus.

“Look at the diversity of life around us today, and you see gliding rodents like flying squirrels, rodents that hop like the kangaroo rat, aquatic species like muskrats, and burrowing animals like pocket gophers. There is an incredible diversity of shapes and ecologies. When that diversity arose is an important question,” Calede said. “Rodents are the most diverse group of mammals on Earth, and about 4 in 10 species of mammals are rodents. If we want to understand how we get incredible biodiversity, rodents are a great system to study.”

The research is published online today (Aug. 24, 2022) in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

The scientists, including Calede, who found the bones and teeth of the new beaver species in western Montana knew they came from beavers right away because of their recognizable teeth. But the discovery of an anklebone, about 10 millimeters long, opened up the possibility of learning much more about the animal’s life. The astragalus bone in beavers is the equivalent to the talus in humans, located where the shin meets the top of the foot.

Calede took 15 measurements of the anklebone fossil and compared it to measurements – over 5,100 in all – of similar bones from 343 specimens of rodent species living today that burrow, glide, jump and swim as well as ancient beaver relatives.

Running computational analyses of the data in multiple ways, he arrived at a new hypothesis for the evolution of amphibious beavers, proposing that they started to swim as a result of exaptation – the co-opting of an existing anatomy – leading, in this case, to a new lifestyle.

“In this case, the adaptations to burrowing were co-opted to transition to a semi-aquatic locomotion,” he said. “The ancestor of all beavers that have ever existed was most likely a burrower, and the semi-aquatic behavior of modern beavers evolved from a burrowing ecology. Beavers went from digging burrows to swimming in water.

“It’s not necessarily surprising because movement through dirt or water requires similar adaptations in skeletons and muscles.”

Fossils of fish and frogs and the nature of the rocks where Microtheriomys articulaquaticus fossils were found suggested it had been an aquatic environment, providing additional evidence to support the hypothesis, Calede said.

Fossils are usually dated based on their location between layers of rocks whose age is determined by the detection of the radioactive decay of elements left behind by volcanic activity. But in this case, Calede was able to age the specimen at a precise 29.92 million years old because of its location within, rather than above or below, a layer of ashes.

“The oldest semi-aquatic beaver we knew of in North America before this was 17 or 18 million years old,” he said. “And the oldest aquatic beaver in the world, before this one, was from France and is about 23 million years old.

“I’m not claiming this new species is necessarily the oldest aquatic beaver ever, because there are other animals that we know, from their teeth, that are related to this species I described.”

Microtheriomys articulaquaticus did not have the flat tail that helps beavers swim today. It likely ate plants instead of wood and was comparably small – weighing less than 2 pounds. The modern adult beaver, weighing 50 pounds or so, is the second-largest living rodent after the capybara from South America.

Calede’s analysis of beaver body size over the past 34 million years suggests beaver evolution adheres to what is known as Cope’s Rule, which posits that organisms in evolving lineages increase in size over time. A giant beaver the size of a black bear lived in North America as recently as about 12,000 years ago. Like all but the two beaver species living today, Castor canadensis and Castor fiber, the giant beaver is extinct.

“It looks like when you follow Cope’s Rule, it’s not good for you – it sets you on a bad path in terms of species diversity,” Calede said. “We used to have dozens of species of beavers in the fossil record. Today we have one North American beaver and one Eurasian beaver. We’ve gone from a group that is super diverse and doing so well to one that is obviously not so diverse anymore.”

This work was funded by the American Philosophical Society Lewis and Clark Fund, Sigma-Xi, the Geological Society of America, the Evolving Earth Foundation, the Northwest Association, the Paleontological Society, the Tobacco Root Geological Society, the UWBM, the University of Washington Department of Biology and Ohio State.

The Big Bang theory is currently the most popular model we have for the birth of our universe. Observations on the expanding universe, as well as observations of Cosmic background radiation, lingering electromagnetic radiation from the Big Bang, have helped back this theory. However, rumors have spread on the internet that the newly released images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) somehow suggest the big bang is wrong. We find this claim to be mostly false. Although the spectacular images from JWST may have surprised scientists in how they might change theories on galaxy formation, they by no means negate the Big Bang theory.

Much of the argument stems from an article written by Eric Lerner (author of the book “The Big Bang Never Happened”). Lerner’s article, published in IAI news, argues that the new James Webb Space Telescope images contradict The Big Bang Hypothesis. Lerner appears to suggest that the distant galaxies seen in the images are older than the Big Bang theory would allow since they seemed to resemble fully formed galaxies. However, the data from JWST suggest that galaxies form more quickly than we think, not that they necessarily contain elements from before the Big Bang or that the universe is not expanding. The observation of these well-formed galaxies at such an early time does not debunk a theory as well supported as the Big Bang.

Lerner also cherrypicks quotes from astronomer Allison Kirkpatrick, who said in an article published in Nature, “Right now I find myself lying awake at three in the morning wondering if everything I’ve done is wrong.” Kirkpatrick has since explained that she was reacting in awe of what astronomers have learned from the first JWST images, not as proof of astronomers panicking that the Big Bang Theory has been debunked. In an article on CNET, Kirkpatrick suggests that images from JWST “support the Big Bang model because they show us that early galaxies were different than the galaxies we see today – they were much smaller!”

As reported by Brian Koberlein at Universe Today…

It’s a common misconception that redshift proves that galaxies are speeding away from us. They aren’t. Distant galaxies aren’t speeding through space. Space itself is expanding, putting greater distance between us. It’s a subtle difference, but it means that galactic redshift is caused by cosmic expansion, not relative motion. It also means that distant galaxies appear a bit larger than they would in a static universe. They are distant and tiny, but the expansion of space gives the illusion of them being larger. As a result, the surface brightness of distant galaxies dims only proportional to redshift.

Professor Jason Steffen, a former NASA scientist who worked on the agency’s Kepler mission and an expert in astronomy/physics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, responds to the article questioning the Big Bang Hypothesis.

In short, the evidence is still overwhelmingly in favor of a hot Big Bang as the origin of the universe.  There are many pieces of evidence that come together to motivate this model.  If the Big Bang were to be wrong, it would not likely be wrong for the reasons described, and it is not wrong because of any observations from JWST.

While the origins of the model stem from observations of the expansion of the universe from galaxy redshifts (the Hubble Law), most of the detailed evidence for the Big Bang comes from the very early universe, the relative abundances of light elements, and the properties of the cosmic microwave background.  The processes that made these occurred within the first half-million years after the Big Bang.  The JWST images are looking at galaxies as they were a half-billion (or more) years after the Big Bang—a factor of 1000 later in time.

There is much more uncertainty with how galaxies form and how the first stars form, which are very complicated processes that involve lots of different physical effects, than there is about the first 500,000 years, which was a relatively simple hot plasma of Hydrogen and Helium ions.  (And before that, it was similar to the conditions in the core of the Sun, which we also understand.)