Science & Environment

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Large hadron collider: A revamp that could revolutionise physics

Deep underground amidst the Alps, scientists are barely able to contain their excitement.

They whisper about discoveries that would radically alter our understanding of the Universe.

"I've been hunting for the fifth force for as long as I've been a particle physicist," says Dr Sam Harper. "Maybe this is the year".

For the past 20 years, Sam has been trying to find evidence of a fifth force of nature, with gravity, electromagnetism and two nuclear forces being the four that physicists already know about.

He's pinning his hopes on a major revamp of the Large Hadron Collider. It's the world's most advanced particle accelerator - a vast machine that smashes atoms together to break them apart and discover what is inside them.

It's been souped up even further in a three-year upgrade. Its instruments are more sensitive, allowing researchers to study the collision of particles from the inside of atoms in higher definition; its software has been enhanced so that it is able to take data at a rate of 30 million times each second; and its beams are narrower, which greatly increases the number of collisions.

What all this means is that there's now the best chance ever of the LHC finding subatomic particles that are completely new to science. The hope is that it will make discoveries that will spark the biggest revolution in physics in a hundred years.

As well as believing that they may find a new, fifth force of nature, researchers hope to find evidence of an invisible substance that makes up most of the Universe called Dark Matter.

The pressure is on the researchers here to deliver. Many had expected the LHC to have found evidence of a new realm of physics by now.

FULL REPORT

 

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CERN has restarted the Large Hadron Collider – and it's more powerful than ever

The hunt for dark matter is on.

After three years of shutdown for maintenance work and upgrades, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been restarted by CERN today to continue scientists' search for physics' biggest mysteries. The LHC will look for new information about the Higgs boson, further our understanding of the Big Bang and seek an explanation for dark matter.

The LHC was switched off in 2018 for its second Long Shutdown (LS2), planned downtime in which scientists can make improvements and check the safety of the accelerator.

At 12:16 CEST (11:16 BST) on 22 April 2022, physicists sent two beams of protons in opposite directions around the LHC. The beams had an injection energy of 450 billion electronvolts – but the long-term aim for this third run of the accelerator is to reach a never-before-achieved 13.6 trillion electronvolts.

“These beams circulated at injection energy and contained a relatively small number of protons. High-intensity, high-energy collisions are a couple of months away,” says the Head of CERN’s Beams department, Rhodri Jones. “But first beams represent the successful restart of the accelerator after all the hard work of the long shutdown.”

Now, scientists will need to work to recommission the machine in its entirety, increasing the energy and intensity of each experiment until collisions reach their goal.

The third run has big shoes to fill. Run 1, starting in 2009 and ending in 2013, saw the discovery of the Higgs Boson. Following the first shutdown, Run 2 (2015-18) revealed the masses for the Higgs boson, top quark and W boson at great precisions.

Over the next few years, scientists from around the world will be able to run new experiments at LHC. The number of collisions expected to run will be unprecedented. The ATLAS and CMS particle detectors will see more action than in Run 1 and Run 2 combined. The investigation into matter and antimatter will continue with the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment seeing three times as many collisions as before.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/cern-restart-large-hadron-collider/

 

Edited April 30, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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Immense crater hole created in Tonga volcano

Researchers have just finished mapping the mouth of the underwater Tongan volcano that, on 15 January, produced Earth's biggest atmospheric explosion in over a century.

The caldera of Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha'apai is now 4km (2.5 miles) wide and drops to a base 850m below sea level.

Before the catastrophic eruption, the base was at a depth of about 150m.

It drives home the scale of the volume of material ejected by the volcano - at least 6.5 cubic km of ash and rock.

"If all of Tongatapu, the main island of Tonga, was scraped to sea level, it would fill only two-thirds of the caldera," Prof Shane Cronin from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, said.

Prof Cronin has spent the past two and a half months in the Pacific kingdom, seconded to its geological services department.

Their report, issued on Tuesday, assesses the eruption and makes recommendations for future resilience.

Although Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha'apai (HTHH) is unlikely to give a repeat performance for many hundreds of years, there are at least 10 volcanic seamounts in the wider region of the south-west Pacific that could produce something similar on a shorter timescale.

New Zealand's National Institute for Water and Atmospheric (NIWA) Research released its bathymetry (depth) map for the area immediately around the volcano, on Monday.

But the agency has yet to take soundings directly over the top of HTHH.

So Prof Cronin and colleagues' data literally fills a hole in the NIWA survey.

FULL REPORT

 

Edited May 25, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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Record bacterium discovered as long as human eyelash

You're supposed to need a microscope to see bacteria, right? Not Thiomargarita magnifica.

This giant cell is clearly visible to the naked eye, having the size and shape of a human eyelash.

Now classified as the world's biggest bacterium, T. magnifica was discovered living on sunken, decaying mangrove tree leaves in the French Caribbean.

Fear not, the organism isn't dangerous and can't cause disease in humans. But do marvel at its proportions.

"These bacteria are about 5,000 times larger than most bacteria. And to put things into perspective, it is the equivalent for us humans to encounter another human who would be as tall as Mount Everest," said Jean-Marie Volland from the Joint Genome Institute at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in the US.

FULL REPORT

 

 

Edited June 23, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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Pentaquarks: scientists find new "exotic" configurations of quarks

Scientists have found new ways in which quarks, the tiniest particles known to humankind, group together.

The new structures exist for just a hundred thousandth of a billionth of a billionth of a second but may explain how our Universe is formed.

Atoms contain smaller particles called neutrons and protons, which are made up of three quarks each.

"Exotic" matter discovered in recent years is made up of four and five quarks - tetraquarks and pentaquarks.

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland have discovered one new pentaquark and two tetraquarks. This takes the total number discovered there to 21. Each is unique, but researchers are excited about the qualities of the three new finds.

The new pentaquark decays into particles that none of the others produce, while the two tetraquarks have the same mass, suggesting they may be the first known pair of exotic structures.

Perhaps even more importantly, though, the latest finds mean that there are now enough of these particles to begin grouping them together, like the chemical elements in the periodic table. That is an essential first step towards creating a theory and set of rules governing exotic mass.

In light of the new discoveries, physicists are discussing this very issue at a special seminar on Tuesday at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which houses the Large Hadron Collider.

Working out miniscule differences between the tiniest things we know about may seem arcane, but the interaction of quarks creates the so-called "strong force" that holds the insides of atoms - and by extension our entire Universe - together.

"The strong force is extremely difficult to calculate, and we don't have firm predictions of how the exotic pentaquarks and tetraquarks are built," says Prof Chris Parkes of Manchester University. "But we hope that by finding out about them we can develop theories that enable us to understand them better."

What are quarks?

A Greek philosopher, Democritus, put forward the idea in the fifth century BC that the world was made up of indivisible particles which he called atoms.

By the end of the 19th and early 20th century, experimental results showed that atoms were made up of smaller particles: electrons, neutrons and protons.

And in the 1960s, it became clear that neutrons and protons themselves were made from smaller particles still, called quarks; and that the interaction of quarks was tied to one of the fundamental forces of nature called the strong force.

The force not only holds the insides of atoms together, but is important in the interactions of other sub-atomic particles that make the Universe tick.

The Large Hadron Collider has undergone a major upgrade and the researchers involved believe that they will discover many more such exotic particles, some of which may have six quarks bound together.

Some of these may have a less fleeting existence - perhaps a hundred billionth of a second. That is brief by human standards, but because these particles travel at close to the speed of light, they would leave trails a few millimetres long, which would be a treasured footprint for physicist sleuths to follow.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62027238

 

Edited July 6, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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Extreme experiments: The laboratories that are pushing science to its limits

Take a look inside some of the most extraordinary science experiments in the world, from the coldest, to the hottest, to the highest.

Scientists go to extraordinary lengths to expand our understanding of radical phenomena in the most extreme labs on Earth.

The deepest (and cleanest)

SNOLAB, Ontario, Canada

Even a Bond villain might consider SNOLAB too remote for an underground lair. Earth’s deepest and cleanest lab is two kilometres underground, part of a nickel and copper mine in Ontario, Canada.

The deep layer of rock between the 5,000m² lab and the Earth’s surface shields it from the cosmic radiation that would otherwise interfere with its sensitive experiments. The lab searches for solar neutrinos (extremely small subatomic particles produced by the Sun) and dark matter, the estimated 27 per cent of matter in the Universe which remains a mystery to us.

But situating a sparkling clean lab in a mine comes with its downsides. As well as a 1.5km walk from the lift to the lab, researchers and support staff must undergo a lengthy cleaning process involving showers, hosed-down boots and lab-laundered clothes to make sure that no mine dirt or particles make it into the facility.

The lab also contains the world’s deepest underground flushing toilet.

FULL REPORT

 

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What is ball lightning?

This rare electrical phenomenon has been puzzling us for millennia.

Ball lightning is a mysterious and unexplained form of lightning which has confused weather watchers throughout history and continues to intrigue researchers today. The phenomenon is generally described as a ball of light that appears during thunderstorms.

The size of the ball varies, from a golf ball to larger than a football, and it tends to hover over the ground. Its lifetime varies too, from a few seconds to a few minutes, with larger and dimmer balls tending to last longer.

Observations go far back in history. Luminous balls feature in the legends of the Argentinean and Chilean Mapuche culture, but the earliest known written reference comes from an English monk in 1195. He described “a dense and dark cloud, emitting a white substance which grew into a spherical shape under the cloud, from which a fiery globe fell towards the river”. Tsar Nicholas II even reported witnessing the phenomenon in a church in St Petersburg as a young child.

A study conducted in the 1960s for the US Atomic Energy Commission found that ball lightning has been seen by 5 per cent of the world’s population – about the same proportion as those who have seen a bolt of normal lightning strike up close.

Scientists think that ball lightning is real, but how it happens is an open question. In 2014, Chinese scientists captured a video of ball lightning while trying to record normal lightning. Their readings show a mixture of silicon, iron and calcium atoms in the ball, all common components of soil.

This lends weight to the theory that when lightning strikes soil, it creates a vapour of silicon nanoparticles. These particles react with air to generate light and heat at relatively low temperatures. However, it does not explain observations of ball lightning passing through walls, or aircraft cockpits. Further research will be needed to finally unravel this mystery.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/what-is-ball-lightning/

 

Edited July 10, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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July 12: Julius Caesar, Alexander Hamilton, Buckminster Fuller, wireless Down Under, Favaloro, Picard

Exploring the history of science on this day. From the groundbreaking to the simply fascinating, here are some key events from 12 July.

Birth of Julius Caesar

This individual’s CV is quite extensive, so this will have to do: author, public speaker, lawyer, soldier, priest, magistrate, politician, general, statesman and dictator of Rome. Gaius Julius Caesar was born on 12 July, 100 BC.

Bust of Julius Caesar in the Musei Vaticani

Caesar’s best-known contribution to the world of science was his decree in 46 BC that the length of a calendar year should reflect astronomical observations of the length of a solar year. His “Julian reform” made the official length of a year 365.25 days and stipulated that an extra day be added to February every fourth year to keep the calendar in sync, which we will next do in 2024 (a “leap year“). This month of July is named after him.

FULL REPORT

 

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What do luminous space cows have to do with Einstein’s most famous equation and accelerating objects gaining mass?

A brain-frying journey to appreciate the weirdness of relativity.

Is it true that an accelerating object gains mass?

This is something you may have heard from someone who has watched a few too many YouTube videos trying to explain all of physics in under two minutes. Let’s start with the basics. What do we mean by “accelerating” and “mass”?

Mass is how much stuff is in an object. Acceleration is any time an object changes its velocity – that includes speeding up and slowing down. How does this relate to a change in mass?

The cosmic speed limit

Like so many things in physics, the answer can be found in the work of Albert Einstein on relativity.

Einstein provided us with two theories of relativity: special relativity and general relativity. And, maybe a little counterintuitively, the more complicated theory is general relativity. Special relativity is special because it looks at special cases – involving massive amounts of energy, ultra-fast speeds and huge distances – all of them without gravity.

Special relativity tells us about the relationship between speed and mass, space and time. Maybe you can see where we’re going with this. Einstein was compelled to think about these things because of the cosmic speed limit set by the speed of light – nearly 300,000 kilometres a second!

It’s commonly known that nothing can go faster than the speed of light. But why? With no speed cameras in space, what is policing this law of nature? And what happens when we try to exceed this speed?

We need to begin with the theory of relativity itself.

Relatively speaking, it is special

Say you’re sitting on a train, facing forward. The train is travelling at 60 kilometres an hour. You’re holding a tennis ball. Now let’s say you throw the tennis ball at 20 kilometres an hour in the same direction the train is going.

Ignoring air resistance – which would slow the ball down – from your perspective, the ball is travelling 20 kilometres an hour. But from the perspective of someone standing on a railway station as the train passes, the tennis ball is travelling at the combined speed of the train and your throw – 80 kilometres an hour.

Now imagine the train is moving at half the speed of light. Instead of throwing a tennis ball in the direction the train is headed, you shine a laser. Let’s get our friend on the railway platform to shine a laser in the same direction at exactly the same time.

From the tennis ball example, you might deduce that the light shone on the train is travelling at the combined speed of the train and the speed of light – or one-and-a-half times the speed of light. Therefore, a third observer thousands of kilometres down the track would see the light from the train arrive first… you would think. But this can’t happen, according to Einstein.

Einstein theorised that the speed of light is constant, so the light in the train would arrive at the third observer at the same time as the light from the platform. What changes here is not the speed of light, but time and space itself. Einstein suggested that we have to think differently about the meaning of words like “simultaneous”.

Space and time behave differently for different observers depending on their state of motion – or their “inertial frame of reference” as Einstein called it.

So, Einstein suggested that as objects approach the speed of light, time dilates (gets slower) and space contracts (gets shorter) according to an outside observer. The train travelling at half the speed of light appears shorter to an outside observer, and more time has passed for those not on the train which would look like a squished and blurred version of its former self. Only then can you explain why the light shone from the train and the platform are seen by the third observer at the same time.

It was thought experiments like these that led Einstein to his theory. Einstein noticed that there’s a relationship between relativity and energy.

Enter the luminous space cow

Imagine a luminous cow in space completely stationary. According to Newtonian mechanics, the cow has no kinetic energy – energy derived from movement. But the light coming from the cow carries energy, so the luminous cow is losing energy.

Now, if you were to zoom past the radiating cow in a spaceship, from your frame of reference, the cow moooo-ves past you. It therefore has a kinetic energy while still losing energy in the form of light.

Think of an ambulance driving past you with its siren on. As the ambulance moves further away, the pitch of the siren changes because the sound waves have further to travel.

Light acts in much the same way. As you zoom past the luminous space cow, light waves from the cow change colour and the energy given off by the cow according to you in your frame of reference is different!

But the total energy must be the same in both cases: whether you’re zooming past or not. You haven’t done anything to the glowing space cow.

Some simple algebra led Einstein to the most famous equation in the world: E = mc². Einstein worked out that energy (E) and mass (m) are equivalent down to a constant – the speed of light squared.

One way of thinking about mass is how hard it is to move an object. A more massive, or heavier, object is more difficult to move than a lighter one. The heavier object has more inertia.

Putting those facts into E=mc², given the speed of light is constant, the greater the energy, the greater the mass.

Stubbornness, mass and inertia

This gained inertia only becomes significant at very fast speeds. The gain increases as the object approaches lightspeed. At lightspeed, you would need an infinite amount of energy to overcome the object’s growing inertia.

All of this is based on Einstein’s assumption – that the speed of light is constant. In line with Einstein’s equations, though, particles of light ­– photons – have no mass meaning they have no inertia to overcome. This is why they can travel at lightspeed. It also opens up the possibility that when you travel close to the speed of light, the fact that time dilates – slows for you – means you could journey into the future. As long as you can get in the ballpark of 300,000 kilometres per second.

While you’re not going to notice an increased mass when you go for a run or even in a train or aeroplane, the physics behind the question is beautiful as it is befuddling. The universe is a very strange place indeed.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/physics/luminous-space-cow-relativity/

 

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VIDEO

A robot boat, controlled from the UK, has returned from an initial survey of the underwater Tongan volcano that erupted explosively back in January.

The Uncrewed Surface Vessel (USV) Maxlimer is part-way through mapping the opening, or caldera, of the underwater Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha'apai (HTHH) volcano.

The vessel, developed by the British company Sea-Kit International, is surveying the volcano as part of the second phase of the Tonga Eruption Seabed Mapping Project (TESMaP), led by New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) and funded by the Nippon Foundation of Japan.

FULL REPORT

 

Edited August 22, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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Scientists could create a genetic doppelgänger of a Tasmanian Tiger. But will it be wild enough to avoid extinction a second time?

Is using the genes from a close relative species really de-extincting the iconic marsupial and will the resulting animal even be able to survive?

It had the head of a wolf, the stripes of a tiger and the stiff tail and pouch of a kangaroo. With it’s dark-rimmed eyes, formidable jaws and staggering 120-degree gape, the thylacine was once the world’s largest living carnivorous marsupial, until it was driven to extinction around 80 years ago.

If Colossal Biosciences have their way, however, it could be back in less than a decade. This week the US biotech company, which is already working to revive the woolly mammoth, announced plans to de-extinct the thylacine, and reintroduce it to its native Tasmania.

Tasmania was the thylacine’s final stronghold. It disappeared from Australia and New Guinea more than 3,000 years ago. In the early 19th century, European settlers to Tasmania declared the animal a sheep killer and put a bounty on its head. Thylacines were slaughtered in the thousands. The last individual, a male called Benjamin, died at Hobart’s Beaumaris Zoo on 7 September 1936.

Gone, but not forgotten. In the time that has passed, this much-maligned and missed marsupial has achieved iconic status. In its native patch, the Tasmanian tiger, as it is also known, is a familiar face on stamps, beer bottles, T-shirts and the like.

The prospect of ‘de-extincting’ it was first mooted over 20 years ago, after Australian scientists recovered fragments of thylacine DNA from a preserved museum specimen, but it’s taken until now for the requisite technology to approach fruition.

In 2017, Prof Andrew Pask from the University of Melbourne and colleagues successfully decoded the thylacine’s genome; an almost complete genetic sequence that will serve as the blueprint for making the new animal.

The plan is to compare it against the genome of one of the thylacine’s closest living relatives, a small marsupial mouse called the fat-tailed dunnart, and then edit the thylacine-specific sequences into a living dunnart cell. Assisted reproductive technologies, such as IVF and cloning, could then be used to produce an embryo.

So far, so good, but there are a number of issues here. Amongst them, is the fact that the new animal will never be an identical genetic copy of the original.

“There will always be some part of the dunnart genome we cannot replace, like the middle and ends of chromosomes,” says Pask, who is partnering with Colossal Biosciences in the multi-million-dollar project. Similarly, the small portion of DNA that lives outside of the cell’s nucleus, in tiny, energy-generating structures called mitochondria, will still be dunnart. The result then, will be something new; a hybrid animal that is part dunnart, part thylacine.

The prized embryo would then need to be nurtured through its gestation, and beyond. Prof George Church, Harvard geneticist and co-founder of Colossal, is pioneering the development of artificial wombs, but another route is to use the dunnart as a surrogate. Marsupials give birth to lentil-sized babies, so although the dunnart is small, this could be possible.

None of these steps are trivial, but perhaps the hardest part is yet to come, as the inaugural joey figures out how to be a thylacine. Writers who witnessed the wild animals, back in the 19th century, described thylacines as social creatures. Joeys, often born two at a time, stayed in their mother’s backward-facing pouch until they were almost fully grown, and then remained with their parents until the next generation of siblings appeared.

During this time, the family group lived and hunted co-operatively. Genetics will no doubt influence this behaviour, but without a living parent to teach them key skills, no one knows exactly how the first de-extincted thylacines will fare.

The goal is to raise multiple generations, with a healthy smattering of genetic diversity edited in as required, and eventually release them into the wilds of Tasmania, where, it is said, there is still plenty of space for them.

The hope is that that this will have a beneficial effect on the local ecosystem, but this too is uncertain. In its day, the thylacine was an apex predator. It dined on native species, such as wallabies and Tasmanian devils, and helped to keep their numbers in check. In its absence, things have changed. Invasive species, such as rabbits and ferrets, have infiltrated the ecosystem, and the Tasmanian devil has become the island’s largest marsupial carnivore. It’s an unnatural promotion for a scavenging animal, that would previously have stolen leftovers from the thylacines’ table.

Twenty-first century thylacines could help to bring order to this wayward ecosystem. Tasmanian devils are suffering from an infectious facial tumour disease. By removing the sick animals, thylacines could help to keep the disease at bay. By predating rabbits and ferrets, invasive species could be kept under control. The problem, however, is that European settlers were so busy shooting the thylacine, that no one ever properly studied its ecology. Until the new animals are released, no one can say for sure how the ecosystem will respond.

Advocates point out that when wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park back in 1995, the effects were overwhelmingly positive. Biodiversity rocketed and the ecosystem blossomed. Critics, however, counter that the wolves cause conflict when they steal nearby livestock.

There are some interesting parallels here. Wolves and thylacines are both apex predators. They evolved almost identical skull shapes in response to their shared carnivorous lifestyles. It’s a classic example of convergent evolution, but that’s not all they have in common. The author Ross Barnett, who writes about the reintroduction of large predators in his book, The Missing Lynx, points out that their folklore is convergent too. In Europe, wolves have been mythologised as bloodthirsty, grandma-slaying killers. Meanwhile, down under, thylacines were painted as sly, child-snatching, sheep gobblers.

This slander is misplaced. Wolves don’t kill grannies, and thylacines never preyed on children. It’s now accepted that the Tasmanian livestock industry erroneously blamed the thylacine for its dwindling flocks, rather than face up to its own management failings. There’s no evidence to suggest that thylacines took more than just the odd sheep, but mud sticks.

This is perhaps the biggest challenge to the thylacine de-extinction project. Plans to reintroduce large predators, such as wolves, to areas of their former range, have shown us just how nervy and trigger-happy people can be. In Poland alone, it’s estimated that up to 1,000 wolves are illegally shot every year. If the thylacine is brought back and released into Tasmania, history could repeat itself. The Tasmanian ecosystem may welcome the thylacine back, but only time will tell if people will too.

• Resurrecting the mammoth could be possible – but we shouldn't bother
• Has an animal ever evolved itself into extinction?
• Could we bring back an extinct species using DNA, Jurassic Park style?

https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/scientists-could-create-genetic-doppelganger-tasmanian-tiger-but-will-be-wild-enough-to-avoid-extinction-second-time/

 

Edited August 23, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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House Of The Dragon: Yes, fire-breathing animals could really exist

It’s all a question of GCSE chemistry and fire-resistant materials...

The prequel to Game Of Thrones, House Of The Dragon, tells the story of House Targaryen, masters of that most fantastical of creatures: giant, fire-breathing dragons. But are dragons really as outlandish as they seem? Surely no animal could grow so large and fly, or evolve the ability to spit fire? Henry Gee, evolutionary biologist and author of A (Very) Short History Of Life On Earth, says the idea is “not quite as daft as you might think”.

He cites the bombardier beetle as an example. “It synthesises a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone,” he says. “When the beetle is threatened, it puts the mix into a combustion chamber, and enzymes provoke the chemicals to react, producing a toxic substance called benzoquinone. It then squirts this boiling-hot liquid into the eyes of an assailant. When you think about that, producing fire is no big deal.”

Gee has a convincing theory for how a dragon would be able to burn you alive. “My scheme would be the biological synthesis of a substance that ignites spontaneously when forcefully ejected into the air. And there is such a substance: diethyl ether.”

As Gee points out (with the obvious caveat that you shouldn’t try this at home), ether is fairly simple to make – all you do is warm alcohol in the presence of sulphuric acid. “Alcohol is produced by all sorts of organisms, and living organisms produce sulphates, so it’s not too big a stretch to say that they might produce sulphuric acid,” he says. “I could imagine that there would be modified salivary glands in the dragon’s mouth containing colonies of microbes that would do just this.”

Ether also has the relatively low flash point of 45°C. “It’s so ignitable that a dragon could squirt liquid ether across its teeth and it would burst into flame.” The dragon’s skin would need to be fire-proof, of course. “There’s no reason why dragon scales wouldn’t contain something like borax,” says Gee, referring to the substance used in many fire-retardant materials.

There are, however, potential issues with the idea of spewing fire from your mouth. “There would have to be some sort of lining of the gland to prevent the dragon from poisoning itself,” says Gee, who points out that there are many animals capable of carrying poison without poisoning themselves.

“You’d also have to watch out for buildup of insoluble sulphates, which could clog up the glands and cause pain and disease.” Gee maintains, however, that there is no biological reason why creatures couldn’t evolve to breathe fire. “Just because it hasn’t happened, it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible.”

What Gee is more sceptical of is the idea that dragons the size of those in Game Of Thrones would be able to take off from the ground.

“If you watch swans or geese in their run-up, you’ll know that if they were any bigger, they wouldn’t manage it,” he says. For comparison, Gee cites the dragon’s spiritual kin: dinosaurs and ancient flying reptiles. “Some pterodactyls were as big as small planes, but they wouldn’t have been much good at flapping. Dragons are so much bigger.” Indeed, Gee theorises that some dinosaurs that were small enough to fly evolved to such a large size that flight became impossible.

“Who knows,” he says. “Maybe some of the later, larger dinosaurs were dragons that fell to Earth.”

Verdict: The bombardier beetle has nearly sussed the biology, and that’s good enough for us! Plus, we just really, really like dragons.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/house-of-dragon-fire-breathing/

 

Edited August 24, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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[Beelzebub]

Which science has been the most beneficial to humans in their day to day life ?

First I thought it's Biology but then I think it's Chemistry, without the break through alloys and substances our electronics, cars, buildings couldn't happen. 

[Coma]

36 minutes ago, Beelzebub said:

Which science has been the most beneficial to humans in their day to day life ?

First I thought it's Biology but then I think it's Chemistry, without the break through alloys and substances our electronics, cars, buildings couldn't happen. 

Hard to argue against chemistry but if I was going to pick one I'd say physics.  

[nudge+]

7 minutes ago, Beelzebub said:

Which science has been the most beneficial to humans in their day to day life ?

First I thought it's Biology but then I think it's Chemistry, without the break through alloys and substances our electronics, cars, buildings couldn't happen. 

When you say "most beneficial to humans in their day to day life", what exactly do you mean? Based on your last sentence, I assume that you're asking people's opinions on which field of science has brought the most progress and improvements to our daily lives, making it as comfortable as possible? If that's the case, I don't think you can really answer that because all branches of science are  interconnected, and pretty much all of the man-made things in our lives are applications of scientific knowledge from different fields combined together, one way or the other. But I'd actually like to give a shoutout to engineering, as without it, scientific knowledge would be "just" knowledge without actual practical application.

[Beelzebub]

8 minutes ago, Coma said:

Hard to argue against chemistry but if I was going to pick one I'd say physics.  

How? Physics has some ideas that would fundamentally change the world like nuclear fusion etc but most of them are not fully practical.

[Beelzebub]

1 minute ago, nudge said:

When you say "most beneficial to humans in their day to day life", what exactly do you mean? Based on your last sentence, I assume that you're asking people's opinions on which field of science has brought the most progress and improvements to our daily lives, making it as comfortable as possible? If that's the case, I don't think you can really answer that because all branches of science are  interconnected, and pretty much all of the man-made things in our lives are applications of scientific knowledge from different fields combined together, one way or the other. But I'd actually like to give a shoutout to engineering, as without it, scientific knowledge would be "just" knowledge without actual practical application.

Yes primarily this. Biology, Physics might be researching into things like prolonged life, nuclear fusion etc but break though in chemistry are more palpable for ordinary people from dyes to semiconductor etc

[nudge+]

 

26 minutes ago, Beelzebub said:

Yes primarily this. Biology, Physics might be researching into things like prolonged life, nuclear fusion etc but break though in chemistry are more palpable for ordinary people from dyes to semiconductor etc

In terms of new breakthroughs, yeah, possibly. But when you think about it, physics played a key role in understanding the principles of electromagnetism, thermodynamics, mechanics, light, etc. and then that knowledge was used for countless things and improvements in our daily lives like electricity, transportation & aviation, optics & imaging, means of communication, advances in medical technology, and so on. But then again, it's what I meant in my previous post - most of the inventions, discoveries and breakthroughs that have had a huge impact on our lives were usually a result of interdsciplinary knowledge and discoveries. Even your own example, semiconductors - you need the knowledge of both physics and chemistry to invent and manufacture it. Materials Science, in general, is a field where physics and chemistry are inseparable. 

Edited August 24, 2022 by nudge

[Coma]

1 hour ago, nudge said:

Materials Science, in general, is a field where physics and chemistry are inseparable. 

That's my degree...teehee...

[Coma]

1 hour ago, Beelzebub said:

How? Physics has some ideas that would fundamentally change the world like nuclear fusion etc but most of them are not fully practical.

Physics isn't just fusion and space exploration.  It also explains basic things like friction, speed, acceleration, gravity, and force.  Again, I'm not arguing against chemistry... I think they go hand in hand.

I would argue that @nudge is correct in that having the knowledge is great but practical use of this knowledge is really what changed the world.

[CaaC (John)+]

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Biomass: Giant 'space brolly' to weigh Earth's forests

It looks for all the world like a giant brolly, but there's no rain where it's going.

This immense reflector-antenna is heading into space, to "weigh" Earth's forests.

It's a key component on the European Space Agency's Biomass mission, now under construction in the UK at aerospace manufacturer Airbus.

When unfurled, the space brolly's 12m by 15m wire-mesh membrane will be part of a very special P-band radar system.

It's special because of its long wavelength.

At 70cm, it can look past the leaf canopy of forests to map the woody parts below - all those trunks and branches.

FULL REPORT

 

[CaaC (John)+]

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What caused the world’s largest die-off of mangroves? A wobble in the Moon’s orbit is partly to blame

By Neil Saintilan, Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University.

Over the summer of 2015, 40 million mangroves died of thirst. This vast die-off – the world’s largest ever recorded – killed off rich mangrove forests along fully 1,000 kilometres of coastline on Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria.

The question is, why? Last month, scientists found a culprit: a strong El Niño event, which led to a temporary fall in sea level. That left mangroves, which rely on tides covering their roots, high and dry during an unusually dry early monsoon season.

Case closed. Or is it? While evidence clearly implicates El Niño, we found this climate cycle had a very large accomplice: the Moon.

In our study, released today, we mapped the expansion and contraction of mangrove forest cover over the past 40 years, and found clear evidence that the Moon’s orbital wobble had an effect.

Our mapping also shows mangroves are expanding and their canopy thickening across the entire continent, which is most likely due to higher carbon dioxide levels. Spectacular though it was, the Gulf of Carpentaria mangrove dieback event was entirely natural.

FULL REPORT

 

[CaaC (John)+]

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NASA catches Sun releasing an ‘X level’ solar flare

Did a massive solar flare affect Hurricane Ian emergency response?

NASA has snapped the most powerful catagory of solar flare on camera while it was on it’s way to Earth.

The flare – which was captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory – is classed as an X1. X-class denotes that it’s one of the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength.

X-flares are the top classification, and these are 10 times stronger than the next level down – M flares.

Major solar flares can knock out certain radio frequencies and can make GPS positioning less accurate.

We’re currently heading towards the Solar Maximum – a time when solar flares are at their most frequent, strong, and potentially catastrophic if they hit Earth.

But even before we get there, the last few months have exceeded predictions and occasionally SpaceX satellites fall out of the sky as a result.

Solar flares are powerful bursts of energy, creating an eruption of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun’s atmosphere. Flares regularly come with coronal mass ejections, or solar radiation storms, which can impact radio communications, electric power grids, navigation signals, and pose risks to spacecraft and astronauts.

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Read more: Solar flare disrupts communications in Africa and Middle East

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As we become increasingly reliant on technology and satellites which are less protected from solar activity, such events could be even more troubling.

In 1972, a solar flare knocked out long-distance telephone communication across the US while a 1989 solar flare left six million Canadians without power for nine hours. And in 2000, an X5-class solar flare on Bastille Day caused some satellites to short circuit and led to radio blackouts.

A huge silver lining though is that auroras are more common and can be seen further from the poles after a big solar storm.

This rise and fall of solar activity is on an 11 year cycle, and at its most active, called solar maximum, the Sun is freckled with sunspots and its magnetic poles reverse.

During solar minimum, on the other hand, sunspots are few and far between. Often, the Sun is as blank and featureless as an egg yolk.

December 2019 marked the beginning of Solar Cycle 25, and already we’re seeing a huge ramp up of solar activity before the next solar maximum in 2025.

Space.com reported that the X1 solar flare might have disrupted Hurricane Ian disaster response. The radio blackout, classed by NOAA as ‘R3’, likely affected rescue workers using 25 MHz radios to communicate.

The disruption in the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere caused by the flare may also have disrupted some GPS positioning.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/nasa-sun-solar-maximum-flare-x-level/

 

[CaaC (John)+]

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Physics Nobel rewards 'spooky science' of entanglement

This year's Nobel Prize in Physics rewards research into quantum mechanics - the science that describes nature at the smallest scales.

The award goes to Frenchman Alain Aspect, American John Clauser and Austrian Anton Zeilinger.

Their work should pave the way to a new generation of powerful computers and telecommunications systems that are impossible to break into.

The men will share prize money of 10 million Swedish krona (£800,000).

This year's three laureates conducted ground-breaking experiments using entangled quantum states, where two sub-atomic particles behave like a single unit even when they are separated.

"Quantum information science is a vibrant and rapidly developing field," said Eva Olsson, a member of the Nobel Committee for Physics.

"It has broad and potential implications in areas such as secure information transfer, quantum computing, and sensing technology."

Alain Aspect, 75, is affiliated to the Université Paris-Saclay and École Polytechnique, Palaiseau. John Clauser, 79, runs his own company in California. Anton Zeilinger, 77, is attached to the University of Vienna.

The same three men won the Wolf Prize together in 2010.

Anton Zeilinger got an early morning call to tell him he'd won. "I'm still kind of shocked, but it's a very positive shock," he said.

 

Quantum mechanics describes the behaviour of sub-atomic particles. It's a field that was opened up in the early 20th Century. And it's in a particular aspect of this science that Tuesday's laureates made their name.

It concerns something called "entanglement" in which two or more quantum particles - usually photons, the particles of light - can be strongly connected when very far apart even though they are not physically linked.

Their shared state might be their energy or their spin. It's a strange phenomenon that Albert Einstein called "spooky action at a distance".

The theoretical underpinning was developed in the 1960s by Northern Irish physicist John Stewart Bell. But it was Aspect, Clauser and Zeilinger who then conducted the experiments to show the phenomenon was real and could have practical uses.

"I was always interested in quantum mechanics from the very first moments when I read about it," Prof Zeilinger told BBC News. "And I actually was struck by some of the theoretical predictions because they did not fit the usual intuitions that one might have."

FULL REPORT

 

[Coma]