Science & Environment

[CaaC (John)+]

  Already have boss   

 

18 minutes ago, CaaC (John) said:

Edit: Post Deleted

Cough, cough, Princess Leia has kicked my ass as this was posted in the Space Thread yesterday.  

 

 

[CaaC (John)+]

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How to pick the best microalgae

New system assesses the potential for biofuel production.

The fuel of the future may be produced by microalgae – but which microalgae?

We know these microorganisms use sunlight and water to generate oils, some of which have potential as sustainable biofuels. It’s a simple and efficient process that needs little space and few resources.

Not all microalgae are equal, however, so the really good biofuel makers need to be pinpointed.

In a new paper, published in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, Argentinian researchers describe their system to assess the potential of certain microalgae species – and identify three good candidates.

Led by Lucas Martín from the National University of the South, the team designed a tool to compare how much oil was produced by each of nine species, taking into account economic, biological and environmental factors.

The promising species they identified are Halamphora coffeaeformis, Navicula cincta and Navicula gregaria. All live in water and scored high on the test, meaning that they produced plenty of oil, were cheap and easy to grow and didn’t require special environments to grow in.

They also have the ability to clump together as a biofilm in water, which makes them much easier to harvest. Harvesting usually accounts for up to 30% of the production cost, so this is useful economically.  

This test also revealed that the microalgae currently being studied as biofuel makers aren’t necessarily the best for the job.

“This tool provides a useful criterion for selecting suitable microalgal species for commercial biodiesel production,” says Martín. “The most surprising thing was the low score obtained by species that are widely studied for the production of biodiesel such as Chlorella vulgaris.”

Previously, experiments to test microalgae were time-consuming and costly, because they required huge amounts of algae and very specialised equipment. This standardised tool allows large-scale identification to quickly sort through the hundreds of thousands of known algae species.

“Our work makes it possible to perform an analysis of the microalgae-based on laboratory-scale data, without the need to go through a pilot-scale experiment,” says Martín.

This also provides ways of identifying other uses of microalgae without relying on costly experiments, where other uses are often found by complete accident. This allows a more deliberate approach to fully investigating the potential uses of these remarkable microalgae.

“We think this procedure could be applied to any other bioproducts that are being produced for microalgae, in addition to biodiesel,” says Martín.

Credit: Lucas Martín

https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/sustainability/how-to-pick-the-best-microalgae/

   

 

 

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Split signals end for a remnant of Antarctic iceberg A68a

The once-mighty iceberg A68a looks to be in its death throes.

The largest fragment from a block of Antarctic ice that originally measured some 5,800 sq km (2,240 sq miles) in the area has suffered another major split.

Satellite imagery shows at least two segments drifting close together about 135km south-east of the British territory of South Georgia. They will no doubt soon move further apart.

For more than three years, A68a was the biggest iceberg in the world.

At its greatest extent, it was about a quarter of the size of Wales - or New Jersey or Israel.

• Why is Wales used as a unit of measurement?

But warmer climes and more aggressive seas gradually pulled it apart as it moved northwards away from Antarctica into the South Atlantic.

FULL REPORT

 

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You may have missed…

Stray science stories from last week to cheer up your Monday.

Off-switch for alcoholism?

Australian-led research has potentially discovered a way to treat alcohol addiction with a simple drug.

In a study published in Biological Psychiatry, the team looked at human tissue samples from both non-drinkers and people with alcohol use disorder (AUD), trying to identify potential therapeutic targets.

They found that targeting a specific receptor in the brain – the muscarinic M4 receptor, to be exact – could reduce alcohol consumption and prevent relapse.

“The findings from our study show a lot of promise in how we can work to treat alcohol addiction in the future,” says one of the lead authors, Chris Langmead from Monash University.

“We have had a long-standing interest in the M4 receptor as a novel therapeutic target in the brain,” adds co-author Arthur Christopoulos, also from Monash. “Now that we know this protein can ameliorate habitual drinking patterns and the risk of relapse, we can move towards the next step, which is translating our findings into drug development.”

How not to freeze a battery

The Red Planet is currently populated by NASA’s robotic rovers, running on batteries that require extra heating units to keep them from freezing in the cold Martian nights. But this adds extra weight and energy requirements to the mission.

Now, researchers from the US and China have taken the next step in developing an energy system that can operate at extremely low temperatures – without the need for extra heat.

As described in a new study published in Nano Letters, the team created a porous carbon aerogel by 3D-printing it from cellulose nanocrystal-based ink. The further treatment turned it into a lattice-like structure with multiple levels of pores. This allowed the material to preserve ion diffusion and charge transfer at -70°C – thus improving the performance of supercapacitors at low temperature.

The team are now embarking on a collaboration with NASA to further study how this device performs at low temperatures.

The archaeology of childbirth

Researchers led by the University of Cambridge have conducted biomolecular analyses of a parchment ‘birthing girdle’ dating back to the year 1500, providing insight into the risky business of childbearing in medieval Europe.

Along with other talismans and relics, birthing girdles were often loaned out by the church to pregnant women. Very little is known about them since they were made from perishable materials like silk, paper and parchment.

“We do not know how the girdles were worn, but there are suggestions due to the dimension of the object (long and narrow), that they were physically worn like a chastity belt or girdle, to help support the pregnant women both physically and spiritually,” explains lead researcher Sarah Fiddyment, from Cambridge.

Fiddyment and team used protein analysis on a parchment girdle, which had stains and visual evidence of being worn.

“We have been able to detect a large number of human proteins matching cervicovaginal fluid, which would indicate active use of the girdle in pregnancy/childbirth,” she says.

“In addition, we detected numerous non-human proteins including honey, milk and plants, which have all been documented in medieval texts as treatments relating to pregnancy and childbirth, reinforcing our evidence of active use of this particular birth girdle.”

How fast is the universe expanding?

Astronomers have come up with a new measure of the Hubble constant in their ongoing quest to determine how quickly the cosmos is expanding. This has been a troubling problem for many years, as estimates made based on the local universe don’t match estimates made by looking further out in space (and therefore further back in time).

This most recent estimate, which used a fairly new technique to measure the distances to 63 giant elliptical galaxies by looking at the variance in their light distribution, reinforces the discrepancy. Astronomers came up with an expansion rate of 73.3 kilometres per second per megaparsec – that is, for every megaparsec (3.3 million light-years) away from Earth, the universe is expanding an extra 73.3 kilometres every second.

Though this tallies well with other local estimates, it’s quite different to the 67.4 km/sec/Mpc estimated from measurements from the distant universe. To understand the evolution of the universe and unlock the mysteries of dark energy, astronomers will need to figure out how to solve this mismatch.

Make green energy the default to curb climate change

By studying the Swiss energy market, researchers have found that if green energy is presented as the standard option for consumers, CO₂ emissions could be slashed.

The study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, analysed data from two Swiss energy companies supplying energy to 234,000 households and 9,000 businesses. The companies structured their products to assign customers the renewable package by default, with options to change to conventional power if they wished.

But both business and private customers generally accepted the default renewable option – even if it was more expensive. Plus, they tended to stay on the greener plan.

The study also busted the myth that if people switch to renewables, they’ll use more energy – six years of energy consumption data showed no evidence for this.

Co-author Ulf Liebe from the University of Warwick concludes: “Our study shows that ‘green defaults’ have an immediate, enduring impact and as such should be part of the toolkit for policymakers and utility companies seeking to increase renewable energy consumption, not only among household customers but also in the business sector.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astronomy/you-may-have-missed-8/

 

[CaaC (John)+]

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Lightning strikes may have sparked life on early Earth

Lightning bolts may have unlocked the phosphorus necessary for the creation of biomolecules that formed the basis of life, a new study suggests.

Lightning strikes occurring over a billion years may have provided sparks of life for the early Earth, according to researchers at Yale University.

A new study suggests that, over time, these bolts could have unlocked the phosphorus necessary for the creation of biomolecules that would form the basis of life on the planet.

Though phosphorus is necessary for the formation of life, it was not easily accessible on the early Earth as it was locked tightly inside insoluble minerals on the planet’s surface

Scientists have long wondered how Earth’s phosphorus got into a usable form to help create DNA, RNA, and other biomolecules needed for life.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/lightning-strikes-may-have-sparked-life-on-early-earth/

 

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Groundbreaking, if it turns out to be real. Probably more likely to be an issue with calculation/measurement error though...

[CaaC (John)+]

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Inside the experiment that could bring psychedelic drugs to the NHS

Scientific evidence for using psychedelics to treat mental health problems has been mounting for the last decade. Here's everything you need to know about psilocybin treatment.

Leonie, 44, knew where her depression came from – but that didn’t make it any easier to live with. Growing up in South Africa, where both her parents were violently attacked, left her with what she calls “a constant, low hum of insecurity and threat, almost like tinnitus.” Her father died when she was 17, and in her 20s, she became her mother’s carer. By the autumn of 2019, she had been on antidepressants for more than half her life, with barely a break.

The medication helped to stabilise Leonie during the most severe episodes that left her bed-bound, but in between, she was advised to continue on a preventative dose. She experienced a relentless low-level depression: “It was almost more debilitating because you’re functional but only half alive. You’re getting by and everything looks okay, but for me, that’s a life half-lived.”

She tried four different selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors – the most common class of antidepressants known as SSRIs – as well as two varieties of therapy. The problem was, she says, that in her experience antidepressants numb you. “It’s what makes you able to deal with the difficult feelings and carry on functioning. But if you’re numb to your own pain, it’s really hard to unpack it and explore it in therapy, make sense of it and file it in a different way. All you’re doing is keeping it there under a band-aid.”

FULL REPORT

 

 

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The Earth’s rotation is changing speed: should we be worried?

Our planet is spinning at a faster and faster rate.

We define a day as 86,400 seconds, or 24 hours – the time it takes for Earth to rotate once. However, the Earth doesn’t rotate perfectly uniformly. Usually, the Earth’s rotation is actually slowing down so that the length of the day increases by about 1.8 milliseconds per century, on average. This means that 600 million years ago a day lasted only 21 hours.

The variation in day length is due to several factors, including the tidal effects of the Moon and Sun, core-mantle coupling inside the Earth, and the overall distribution of mass on the planet. Seismic activity, glaciation, the weather, the oceans and the Earth’s magnetic field may also affect the length of the day.

In 2020 scientists made a startling discovery. They found that, instead of slowing down, the Earth has started to spin faster. It is now spinning faster than at any time in the last 50 years. In fact, the shortest 28 days on record all occurred during 2020.

As yet, scientists are not entirely sure what is causing this increase in Earth’s rotation rate, but some have suggested it could be due to the melting of glaciers during the 20th Century, or the accumulation of large quantities of water in the northern hemisphere reservoirs. However, experts predict that this speeding
up is a temporary effect and the Earth will start slowing down again in the future.

But, for now, should we be worried? Although it will have no effect on our daily lives, there could be serious implications for technology such as GPS satellites, smartphones, computers and communication networks, all of which rely on extremely accurate timing systems. But such problems are ultimately surmountable, perhaps simply by subtracting a leap second rather than adding one.

So no, we shouldn’t be worried – unless the shortening of the day is attributable to human activity.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/earth-rotation-speed/

 

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Wasaburo Ooishi and the jet stream

The discovery of a high-speed air current above the Earth was first exploited as a weapon of war.

In his recent book The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, A Temptation And The Longest Night Of The Second World War, journalist Malcolm Gladwell writes about some of the weaponry that emerged from the crucible of World War Two.

Gladwell’s narrative centres on the story of the US military’s determination to drop bombs on Japan. This objective required the capture of islands in the North Pacific, specifically Guam and Tinian in the Marianas chain, to be used as bases from which B-29 Superfortress bombers could reach the Japanese mainland.

Gladwell’s story also turns on two conflicting philosophies of aerial warfare. 

On one side was Dutch-born Carl Lukas Norden, inventor of the Norden bombsight, which the US National Aviation Hall of Fame describes as a “complex assemblage of more than 2000 cams, gears, mirrors, lenses and other components … Technically, the sight could place a bomb inside a 100-foot (30m) circle from four miles up (about 6.5km). But the bombardiers claimed that it could ‘put a bomb in a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet’.” 

Norden and his supporters within the US military believed that if one warring country could destroy an enemy’s crucial industries and cripple its ability to fight through the use of highly accurate aerial bombardment, the mass carnage of a ground war, as seen across Europe during World War One, could be avoided. 

On the other side were the chemists working in a laboratory at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, led by organic chemist Louis Fieser. They came up with a substance for use in incendiary bombs that Gladwell describes as “gasoline mixed with aluminium naphthenate plus aluminium palmitate: napalm”.

Whether the B-29 Superfortress bombers targeting Japan were to drop high-explosive bombs onto carefully selected targets, or incendiary bombs intended to indiscriminately destroy swathes of highly flammable Japanese homes, Gladwell notes that the Marianas were within range (2,600km) of Japan “only under perfect conditions”.

Finally, in late 1944, the bombers set off for Japan, loaded with a high-explosive ordinance and equipped with Norden bombsights. But after all the invention and planning, the mission was a failure. As Gladwell describes it, the bombardiers couldn’t make their bombsights line up on their targets. From out of nowhere, the planes found themselves swept along by 125-knot tailwinds. “‘We’re going 480 miles an hour [770km/h]. It’s impossible – it can’t be,” he quotes one bombardier as saying.

The US bombers had “discovered” Earth’s jet stream, a fast-flowing air current on the edge of the stratosphere that flows from west to east.

“The jet stream is arguably the greatest weather system on Earth,” says Tim Woollings, a climate scientist in the Oxford University Department of Physics. “If you were only given one piece of information from which to infer something about the weather, then across much of the Earth’s surface you’d want it to be about the jet stream.”

British meteorologist James Glaisher is credited with its initial discovery; he made a series of ascents by balloon during the 1860s. But 50 years later, unbeknownst to the Americans, the jet stream was rediscovered by Japanese meteorologist Wasaburo Ooishi (sometimes spelt Oishi).

Ooishi was born on 15 March 1874, in Tosu, Saga, on the Japanese island of Kyushu. A 2013 article in New Scientist magazine explains that in the mid-1920s, Ooishi, in his job as a meteorologist, released hundreds of research balloons near Mount Fuji, and saw something odd. Once the balloons had climbed high into the atmosphere above the clouds, they began hurtling eastwards over the Pacific. Persistent high-level winds, often stronger than a hurricane, were blowing from west to east over Japan.

Other people had observed something similar in Europe, but Ooishi was the first to put two and two together and pinpoint the existence of a permanent tunnel of wind circling Earth travelling between 100 and 400 km/h.

In 1926 Ooishi reported on his findings to Japan’s Aerological Observatory. However, along with his duties as a meteorologist, Ooishi was coincidentally deputy director of the Japan Esperanto Society. Esperanto is an international language, created in 1887 by L L Zamenhof, a Polish ophthalmologist. The idea behind the creation of a common language was to facilitate communication among people from different countries. But apparently, Ooishi’s pioneering discovery wasn’t communicated to the ears of the US military high command.

While the Americans were working out how to deal with their new “discovery”, the Japanese were conceiving a bold plan based on Ooishi’s findings that was effectively the world’s first intercontinental weapon: an incendiary balloon bomb, the Fu-Go, set aloft from Japan and designed to travel across the entire Pacific Ocean on the jet stream to terrorise the American civilian population on their home soil.

All up, around 9,300 hydrogen-filled balloon bombs were launched between November 1944 and April 1945, each carrying around 450kg of gear and explosives on a trip calculated to take three days. The challenges were enormous. As hydrogen expands when warmed by the sun and contracts when cooled at night, a control system was devised to discard sandbag ballast when its altimeter dropped below a certain height. Likewise, when a balloon exceeded a certain altitude, the balloon vented hydrogen. After three days, a flash of gunpowder released the bombs suspended beneath the balloons.

The plan was bold, but not particularly successful. Only about 300 made the distance, the rest landing in the ocean, and only one causing any significant damage, killing a pregnant woman and five children who discovered a grounded device while on a picnic in Oregon. 

The balloons’ origins were a mystery to the Americans – no one could believe they had sailed all the way from Japan. But their potential threat was recognised, and all news of them was censored in the US.

Remains of the balloons have continued to be found right up until 2014. An intact balloon is on display in the Canadian War Museum.

Ooishi died in 1950.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/climate/wasaburo-ooishi-and-the-jet-stream/

 

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World's Newest Ocean

 

Risen Africa

If you think about it, planet earth has one huge global ocean, oceanographers and the nations of the world however divided it into distinct geographic regions; The Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, the Southern and the Arctic oceans. The world has however in recent years been on the front row seat to something incredibly rare, scientists, tourists and everyone who loves general knowledge has been treated by mother nature to something hardly noticeable but incredibly profound which takes millions of years to create, the formation of the world’s newest ocean.

 

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Science & Environment

Renewed quest to find Shackleton's lost Endurance ship

It's arguably the most famous shipwreck whose location has yet to be found.

The Endurance vessel, which was lost on Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated expedition in 1914-17, lies at the bottom of the Weddell Sea.

Many have thought about trying to identify its resting place; a few have even had a go. But sea-ice cover in the region makes navigation very tricky.

Dr John Shears and colleagues, however, are undaunted. Having been beaten on their last mission, they're returning.

The team will take different submersibles this time after the type of vehicle used on the previous quest went missing.

If the group succeeds in finding Endurance, they'll map it and photograph it, but they won't retrieve any artefacts.

Shackleton's ship is a site of historic importance and has been designated as a monument under the international Antarctic Treaty. It mustn't be disturbed in any way.

"This ship has become an icon," said Dr Shears. "Shackleton's epic story of survival strikes a chord right across the ages. And of the shipwrecks out there, it is the most famous one still left to be discovered and also the most difficult to locate.

"If we can identify it, we'll inspect it, and make a detailed 3D scan of it using lasers. And we hope to broadcast all of this at the time," he told BBC News.

• Will anyone ever find Shackleton's lost ship?
• 'Stunning' seafloor ridges record Antarctic retreat
• A new map traces Shackleton's footsteps

FULL REPORT

 

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How new X-ray scanning technology is revealing the secret lives of ancient animals

Palaeontologists using synchrotron X-ray scanning are calling it 'the superhero of visualisation'.

Long perceived as the study of a bunch of irrelevant dead things, we are now seeing a radical transformation in palaeontology, the science of extinct life.

But the use of statistical methods to analyse big data, and the routine CT scanning of fossils to reveal their minute microstructures, have opened up entirely new fields of research, including how mammals became the warm-blooded milk-givers of the modern world.

Thanks to new technologies and big-data processing, knowledge of extinct life has exploded from the boundaries to which pen, paper and a keen eye had previously confined it. They reveal the origins of animals that define our planet, providing results used in everything from medicine to conservation and climate change mitigation.

Many of these methods are being deployed on fossils from the UK – such as the ones I work on from the Isle of Skye – contributing to wholesale revisions in our understanding of the evolution of major living groups, including our own lineage.

Using X-ray CT scanning (computed tomography) is a ubiquitous part of modern palaeontology. This is especially true for vertebrate animals, but it can be used for the study of invertebrates, plants and the rocks themselves.

Manual thin sections are a long-established analytical tool in science, generated by slicing materials so finely that light can be passed through them. The advantage CT provides is a chance to observe the structure of fossils without damaging them.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/how-new-x-ray-scanning-technology-is-revealing-the-secret-lives-of-ancient-animals/

 

[Mel81x+]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/30/brazilian-amazon-released-more-carbon-than-it-absorbed-over-past-10-years

I'm not sure why this isn't talked about a bit more but I suppose when you think about it that its really quite true.

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17 minutes ago, Mel81x said:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/30/brazilian-amazon-released-more-carbon-than-it-absorbed-over-past-10-years

I'm not sure why this isn't talked about a bit more but I suppose when you think about it that its really quite true.

The good news is that the rest of the rainforest across the Amazonian Basin still absorbs more carbon than it releases, and it is still able to offset the negative trend in Brazil. The bad news is, with deforestation, illegal logging, biomass burning, land grabbing, cattle ranching, dam-building and other similar activities continuing in combination with droughts, and drying soil, it's just a question of time when it turns into a savannah. 

[CaaC (John)+]

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US lab stands on threshold of key nuclear fusion goal

A US science institute is on the verge of achieving a longstanding goal in nuclear fusion research.

The National Ignition Facility uses a powerful laser to heat and compress hydrogen fuel, initiating fusion.

An experiment suggests the goal of "ignition", where the energy released by fusion exceeds that delivered by the laser, is now within touching distance.

Harnessing fusion, the process that powers the Sun, could provide a limitless, clean energy source.

In a process called inertial confinement fusion, 192 beams from NIF's laser - the highest-energy example in the world - are directed towards a peppercorn-sized capsule containing deuterium and tritium, which are different forms of the element hydrogen.

This compresses the fuel to 100 times the density of lead and heats it to 100 million degrees Celsius - hotter than the centre of the Sun. These conditions help kickstart thermonuclear fusion.

• Fusion milestone passed at US lab
• Man-made star to unlock cosmic secrets
• Giant laser experiment powers up

An experiment carried out on 8 August yielded 1.35 megajoules (MJ) of energy - around 70% of the laser energy delivered to the fuel capsule. Reaching ignition means getting a fusion yield that's greater than the 1.9 MJ put in by the laser.

"This is a huge advance for fusion and for the entire fusion community," Debbie Callahan, a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which hosts NIF, told BBC News.

As a measure of progress, the yield from this month's experiment is eight times NIF's previous record, established in Spring 2021, and 25 times the yield from experiments carried out in 2018.

"The pace of improvement in energy output has been rapid, suggesting we may soon reach more energy milestones, such as exceeding the energy input from the lasers used to kick-start the process," said Prof Jeremy Chittenden, co-director of the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College London.

NIF scientists also believe they have now achieved something called "burning plasma", where the fusion reactions themselves provide the heat for more fusion. This is vital for making the process self-sustaining.

"Self-sustaining burn is essential to getting high yield," Dr Callahan explained. "The burn wave has to propagate into the high density fuel in order to get a lot of fusion energy out.

"We believe this experiment is in this regime, although we are still doing analysis and simulations to be sure that we understand the result."

As a next step, Dr Callahan said the experiments would be repeated. "That's fundamental to experimental science. We need to understand how reproducible and how sensitive the results are to small changes," she said.

"After that, we do have ideas for how to improve on this design and we will start working on those next year."

Prof Chittenden explained: "The mega-joule of energy released in the experiment is indeed impressive in fusion terms, but in practice this is equivalent to the energy required to boil a kettle."

He added: "Far higher fusion energies can be achieved through ignition if we can work out how to hold the fuel together for longer, to allow more of it to burn. This will be the next horizon for inertial confinement fusion."

Existing nuclear energy relies on a process called fission, where a heavy chemical element is split to produce lighter ones. Fusion works by combining two light elements to make a heavier one.

Construction on the National Ignition Facility began in 1997 and was complete by 2009. The first experiments to test the laser's power began in October 2010.

NIF's other function is to help ensure the safety and reliability of America's nuclear weapons stockpile. At times, scientists who want to use the huge laser for fusion have had their time squeezed by experiments geared towards national security.

But in 2013, the BBC reported that during experiments at NIF, the amount of energy released through fusion had exceeded the amount of energy absorbed by the fuel - a breakthrough and a first for any fusion facility in the world. Results from these tests were later published in the journal Nature.

NIF is one of several projects around the world geared towards advancing fusion research. They include the multi-billion-euro Iter facility, currently under construction in Cadarache, France.

Iter will take a different approach to the laser-driven fusion at NIF; the facility in southern France will use magnetic fields to contain hot plasma - electrically-charged gas. This concept is known as magnetic confinement fusion (MCF).

But building commercially viable fusion facilities that can provide energy to the grid will require another giant leap.

"Turning this concept into a renewable source of electrical energy is likely to be a long process and will involve overcoming substantial technical challenges, such as being able to re-create this experiment several times a second to produce a steady source of power," said Prof Chittenden.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58252784

 

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This is a bit creepy, but also amazing.

 

[CaaC (John)+]

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Big John the dinosaur and a happy Neanderthal: The best images in science this month

From a dinosaur jigsaw to a very happy Neanderthal and everything in between. Take a look at the best photos in science this month.

Autumn is on its way, and without wishing to sound too melodramatic, the end of the year is already in sight.

As many parts of the world start to open up and return to some kind of post-COVID normality, more and more events have started to take place, with lots of old and new discoveries on display.

Mother Nature has also been busy, with the Cumbre Vieja volcano devastating parts of the island of La Palma, and forcing thousands from their homes.

FULL REPORT

 

 

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Here’s why scientists don’t know how life on Earth began

Earth is unlike any planet we know by virtue of hosting a rich variety of life. But experts are still unsure what got it started.

Open your eyes anywhere on Earth and there is life: whether it’s a pigeon in the park or the invisible microorganisms coating every surface. But when the planet was born 4.5 billion years ago, it was sterile. How did the first life emerge?

The short answer is we don’t know. If we did, we could reproduce it. Scientists could put the right chemicals in a sealed container under the correct conditions and when they opened it, they’d find living organisms. Nobody has ever done this.

But while we don’t know exactly how life began, we have a lot of clues.

Let’s start with the easiest bits: what is life made of and where did those components come from? Living organisms contain thousands of chemicals: like proteins and nucleic acids that carry our genetic information. These chemicals are complex, but we now know that their constituent parts form quite readily.

The first evidence of this was published in 1953 by a young chemist named Stanley Miller. He put water and three gases in a glass apparatus, mimicking the sea and air of the young Earth. Miller heated the water and electrically shocked the air to simulate lightning. Within days, this setup produced an amino acid: a fragment of protein.

Since then, scientists have performed many similar studies. In research published in September 2020, researchers led by Sara Szymkuć (now president of start-up firm Allchemy Inc), compiled dozens of experiments. They created a ‘map’ showing how chemicals can be transformed one into another. Starting with just six everyday chemicals, such as water and methane, they could make tens of thousands of substances found in living organisms.

The implication is that the young Earth was a factory of biological chemicals. But having lots of these chemicals doesn’t necessarily yield life, any more than a pile of bricks will automatically become a house.

This is where things get tricky, because we must think about what makes something alive. It boils down to three things. First, the organism has to keep itself together, often with an outer layer, the removal of which is immediately problematic. Second, it must feed itself. This involves complex chemical reactions. And third, life has to reproduce itself, which means it must have genes it can pass on.

The last 50 years of origin-of-life research were dominated by attempts to make one of these systems on its own: for instance, a genetic molecule that reproduced by copying itself. The other bits were assumed to come later.

Personally, I’m dubious about this approach. None of the three systems is alive by itself: they need each other. What’s more, if Earth was doing such a good job of making all the chemicals of life, it may be that all three systems formed simultaneously in the same place. This would have happened more readily in a confined space, such as a deep-sea hydrothermal vent or a pool on land.

Exactly how life originated is still unclear, but what was once utterly mysterious now seems much less inexplicable.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/how-did-life-on-earth-begin/

 

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Science & Enviroment

Neutrino result heralds new chapter in physics

A new chapter in physics has opened, according to scientists who have been searching for a vital building block of the Universe.

A major experiment has been used to search for an elusive sub-atomic particle: a key component of the matter that makes up our everyday lives.

The search failed to find the particle, known as the sterile neutrino.

This will now direct physicists towards even more interesting theories to help explain how the Universe came to be.

Prof Mark Thomson, the executive chair of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which funds the UK's contribution to the Microboone experiment, described the result as ''pretty exciting''.

That is because a sizeable proportion of physicists have been developing their theories on the basis that the existence of the sterile neutrino was a possibility.

• Biggest cosmic mystery 'step closer' to solution

''This has been out there for a long time now and generated a lot of interest,'' Prof Thomson told BBC News.

''The result is really interesting because it has an influence on emerging theories in particle physics and cosmology.''

The Microboone experiment is based at the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois - just outside Chicago. But physicists from many countries are involved with the project.

Neutrinos are ghostly sub-atomic particles that permeate the Universe, but barely interact with the everyday world around us. Each second, billions of them pass right through the Earth - and everyone living on it.

Neutrinos come in three known types, or flavours - the electron, muon and tau. In 1998, Japanese researchers discovered that neutrinos changed from one flavour to another as they travelled.

This flavour-flipping cannot fully be explained by the current "big theory" of sub-atomic physics - called the Standard Model. Some physicists believe that finding out why the neutrino has such a tiny mass - which is what allows them to change flavour - will give them a deeper understanding of how the Universe works and specifically how it came into being.

Anti-Matter

Current theories suggest that, shortly after the Big Bang, there were equal amounts of matter and its shadowy mirror-image anti-matter. However, when matter collides with anti-matter, they violently annihilate each other, releasing energy. If there were equal amounts in the early Universe, they should have cancelled each other out.

Instead, most of the Universe today is made of matter, with much smaller amounts of anti-matter.

Some scientists believe that, contained within the neutrino's flavour-changing, is the cosmic sleight-of-hand that enabled some matter to survive after the Big Bang and create the planets, stars and galaxies that make up the Universe.

In the 1990s, an experiment called the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector experiment at the US Department for Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico saw the production of more electron neutrinos than could be explained by the three-neutrino flavour-flipping theory. That result was confirmed by a separate experiment tin 2002.

Physicists proposed the existence of a fourth flavour called the sterile neutrino. They believed this form of the particle could explain the over-production of electron neutrinos and, crucially, give an insight into why the particles change flavour.

They were named sterile neutrinos because they are predicted not to interact with matter at all, whereas other neutrinos can - though very rarely. Detecting a sterile neutrino would have been a bigger discovery in sub-atomic physics than the Higgs boson because, unlike other forms of neutrino and the Higgs particle, it is not part of the current Standard Model of physics.

A team involving nearly 200 scientists from five countries developed and built the Micro Booster Neutrino Experiment, or Microboone, in order to find it. Microboone consists of 150 tonnes of hardware in a space that's the size of a lorry.

Its detectors are highly sensitive: its observations of the sub-atomic world have been likened to looking in ultra-high definition.

The team has now announced that four separate analyses of data gathered by the experiment show "no hint" of the sterile neutrino.

A New Chapter

But this result is not so much the end of the story, but the beginning of a new chapter.

Dr Sam Zeller from Fermilab says that the non-detection does not have to contradict previous findings.

"The earlier data doesn't lie," she said.

"There's something really interesting happening that we still need to explain. Data is steering us away from the likely explanations and pointing toward something more complex and interesting, which is really exciting."

Prof Justin Evans, from the University of Manchester, believes that the puzzle posed by the latest findings marks a turning point in neutrino research.

"Every time we look at neutrinos, we seem to find something new or unexpected," he said.

"Microboone's results are taking us in a new direction, and our neutrino programme is going to get to the bottom of some of these mysteries."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-59051779

Edited October 27, 2021 by CaaC (John)
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[CaaC (John)+]

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Antarctic bacteria live on air and use hydrogen as fuel

Scientists have found that hundreds of bacterial species in the frozen soils in East Antarctica use hydrogen to make water.

By Pok Man Leung, Monash University; Chris Greening, Monash University, and Steven Chown, Monash University

Humans have only recently begun to think about using hydrogen as a source of energy, but bacteria in Antarctica have been doing it for a billion years.

We studied 451 different kinds of bacteria from frozen soils in East Antarctica and found most of them live by using hydrogen from the air as a fuel. Through genetic analysis, we also found these bacteria diverged from their cousins in other continents approximately a billion years ago.

These incredible microorganisms come from ice-free desert soils north of the Mackay Glacier in East Antarctica. Few higher plants or animals can prosper in this environment, where there is little available water, temperatures are below zero, and the polar winters are pitch-black.

Despite the harsh conditions, microorganisms thrive. Hundreds of bacterial species and millions of cells can be found in a single gram of soil, making for a unique and diverse ecosystem.

How do microbial communities survive in such punishing surroundings?

A dependable alternative to photosynthesis

We discovered more than a quarter of these Antarctic soil bacteria create an enzyme called RuBisCO, which is what lets plants use sunlight to capture carbon dioxide from air and convert it into biomass. This process, photosynthesis, generates most of the organic carbon on Earth.

However, we found more than 99% of the RuBisCO-containing bacteria were unable to capture sunlight. Instead, they perform a process called chemosynthesis.

Rather than relying on sunlight to power the conversion of carbon dioxide into biomass, they use inorganic compounds such as the gases hydrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide.

Living on air

Where do the bacteria find these energy-rich compounds? Believe it or not, the most reliable source is the air!

Air contains high levels of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide, but also trace amounts of the energy sources hydrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide.

They are only present in air in very low concentrations, but there is so much air it provides a virtually unlimited supply of these molecules for organisms that can use them.

And many can. Around 1% of Antarctic soil bacteria can use methane, and some 30% can use carbon monoxide.

More remarkably, our research suggests that 90% of Antarctic soil bacteria may scavenge hydrogen from the air.

The bacteria gain energy from hydrogen, methane and carbon by combining them with oxygen in a chemical process that is like a very slow kind of burning.

Our experiments showed the bacteria consume atmospheric hydrogen even at temperatures of -20°C, and they can consume enough to cover all their energy requirements.

What’s more, the hydrogen can power chemosynthesis, which may provide enough organic carbon to sustain the entire community. Other bacteria can access this carbon by “eating” their hydrogen-powered neighbours or the carbon-rich ooze they produce.

Water from thin air

When you burn hydrogen, or when the bacteria harvest energy from it, the only by-product is water.

Making water is an important bonus for Antarctic bacteria. They live in a hyper-arid desert, where water is unavailable because the surrounding ice is almost permanently frozen and any moisture in the soil is rapidly sucked out by the dry, cold air.

So the ability to generate water from “thin air” may explain how these bacteria have been able to exist in this environment for millions of years. By our calculations, the rates of hydrogen-powered water production are sufficient to rehydrate an entire Antarctic cell within just two weeks.

By adopting a “hydrogen economy”, these bacteria fulfil their needs for energy, biomass, and hydration. Three birds, one stone.

Could a hydrogen economy sustain extraterrestrial life?

The minimalist hydrogen-dependent lifestyle of Antarctic soil bacteria redefines our understanding of what is the very least required for life on Earth. It also brings new insights into the search for extraterrestrial life.

Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, making up almost three-quarters of all matter. It is a major component of the atmosphere on some alien planets, such as HD 189733b which orbits a star 64.5 light-years from Earth.

If life were to exist on such a planet, where conditions may not be as hospitable as on much of Earth, consuming hydrogen might be the simplest and most dependable survival strategy.

“Follow the water” is the mantra for searches of extraterrestrial life. But given bacteria can literally make water from air, perhaps the key to finding life beyond Earth is to “follow the hydrogen”.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/biology/antarctic-bacteria-live-on-air-and-use-hydrogen-as-fuel/

 

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Resurrecting the mammoth could be possible – but we shouldn’t bother

Kent H Redford and William M Adams, authors of Strange Natures, explain how de-extinction could be a strategy for conservation, but the real power of gene editing lies elsewhere.

The return of the dead to life has long fascinated storytellers, featuring in myths like Orpheus and Eurydice, festivals like the Mexican Dia del Muerte, in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and, of course, Jurassic Park. The idea continues to cast its spell. As we describe in our book Strange Natures, ‘de-extinction’, or the ‘resurrection’ of extinct species is the idea about the use of novel genetic technologies that most excites commentators about conservation.

FULL REPORT

 

 

Edited November 27, 2021 by CaaC (John)
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58 minutes ago, CaaC (John) said:

 

We talked about it earlier in this thread:

 

It's interesting stuff for sure.

[CaaC (John)+]

44 minutes ago, nudge said:

It's interesting stuff for sure.

My whoops, will have to start writing topics down so I don't double post, only excuse is I am getting old and my brain is shrinking