Science News Thread (for articles that don't relate to ongoing discussions)

[kerbiloid]

4 hours ago, magnemoe said:

In short the majority of rush traffic is people going to and from work. Its an pain limit on how long you will travel so you either move or don't take that job. 
Better transport will increase that distance, it might be highways, rail or subways. But cars are more flexible so making an highway better might move people from public transport to cars as people will select that is most convenient. 

Its not an solvable problem, automated cars will not solve it, might make it worse having all the empty cars driving slowly around as its no parking spots.

The easy solution is to make private car ownership unavailable, together with development of public transport.

[AngrybobH]

I was thinking about this small versus wide lane road thing. I'd say I agree with the studies and all but, I have a counter example. One I should have thought about before. I currently live in west Texas. The roads here have wide lanes. When I first came to this place I remarked that one lane is as wide as two lanes (with only a tiny bit of exaggeration). I learned to drive in central Massachusetts. The lanes there are tiny in comparison with hills (real hills unlike west Texas hills) and curves.

I once was driving in Boston with the flow of traffic. Traffic conditions were congested and the road was not straight. I was moving about 90MPH with about an inch between my right mirror and the left mirror of the car next to me and less than a car length in front or behind me. A narrow curvy road with buildings close to the curb did not slow down traffic.

In west Texas, I routinely drive on a road with a posted speed of 45MPH. This road has 3 lanes in both directions and a turn lane, the buildings are set far back from the road. It is almost never congested. But, almost every time I drive on this road there are vehicles driving side by side at about 15MPH lower than the posted speed (which is common on all roads down here even the highways). Wide, straight lanes with buildings set back does not speed up traffic.

Quick stat look up says Texas has 33 million people and about 4400 traffic deaths a year. Mass has 6.9 million people with 400 traffic deaths per year.

This makes me wonder about the studies of roadways. I'd agree if/when someone says the US does it wrong but, there has to more to it than roads alone, as I have said before. The Texas vs. Mass example makes me think speed has nothing to do with it but straight wide roads makes people think they don't have to actively participate in driving 100% of the time.

1 minute ago, kerbiloid said:

public transport

Would be nice do have but it's pretty much a no go in the US.

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, AngrybobH said:

Would be nice do have but it's pretty much a no go in the US.

Just cut the salary. Mass automation is working on this.

(Not to get into conspirology about the middle class future, but...)

[Codraroll]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Just cut the salary. Mass automation is working on this.

(Not to get into conspirology about the middle class future, but...)

Public transport in the US has bigger challenges than just the salary cost for the drivers. Chief among them is the extremely low density of urban development.

Consider for instance the city of Des Moines, Iowa (map link). The footprint of the city is about five times the size of Amsterdam, but it contains less than one-ninth as many inhabitants. Downtown Des Moines primarily consists of a handful of large office buildings, a stadium, a convention center, and a hospital, and vast amounts of parking space where visitors can leave their cars while attending to their business downtown. Nobody lives there. Where people live is in single-family houses sprawling from the very edge of the downtown core and for a dozen or so miles until countryside takes over. One building per household, one driveway per building, a dozen or so driveways per street, a dozen or so streets per suburban subdivision, all housing and nothing else. No restaurants, no street cafes, no corner stores, not even a newsagent. Those are all wrapped up neatly inside giant, boxy malls or smaller, separate strip malls, both in their own zones, surrounded by further oceans of parking lots. Add some industrial areas, some outside-downtown office parks (to accommodate more parking directly servicing each building), and the occasional school or church here and there, and you've got yourself a typical American city.  People live, work, and shop in very separate areas, often on opposite sides of the city. Even if you live right on the border between two zones, you usually have to cross a highway or an eight-lane stroad to get from one zone to the other.

Now try to draw up public transport lines in this thinly stretched mess. You will quickly notice that destinations are very far apart. Downtown is fine enough, enough people work inside each office skyscraper to support its own bus stop. But where does the bus line go from there? The residential areas are too sprawled. Hardly anybody lives inside a reasonable walking distance from each individual bus stop, which means the line will need to stop on every other street corner to service enough potential passengers to be economically feasible. Problem is, nobody wants to take a bus that stops on every other street corner, because then it takes forever to get anywhere. Likewise in the commercial areas, each shop is surrounded by so much parking and so little pedestrian infrastructure that you can hardly walk from one to the other, necessitating a bus stop for every shop. But again, hardly anyone would use each individual stop, but they add to the travel time. There's simply not enough people in any one place to make it feasible to establish a public transit line. It remains faster to go by car, and so cars are prioritized in street design, which further diminishes any alternatives.

So before public transit can be established, something needs to happen to the city planning. I think the lowest-hanging fruit is to reduce the amount of mandatory required parking for shops and offices, which would allow them to group up in smaller, more walkable clusters. It would also free up oodles of downtown space. Second, build some mixed-use development with apartments, shops, and offices together. Then you've got enough density to make a public transit corridor worthwhile. Then further development can be concentrated around the transit stops. And for Pete's sake, extend the transit corridors to the airport. That's a rarity in US cities. Las Vegas is the worst offender, with an airport right in the middle of downtown and millions of visitors arriving every year for temporary stays in hotels not three miles away. The city even has a monorail line that runs between most of the hotels. Yet lobbying from car rental and taxi companies prevented the monorail from being connected to the airport. Hence, visitors to the city rent a car instead of using public transport, the public transport ends up being mostly unused, and then its passenger numbers is used as an argument against building more public transport. I just can't even ...

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, Codraroll said:

Public transport in the US has bigger challenges than just the salary cost for the drivers.

I didn't mean the bus drivers, I meant the car owners.
They have the cars while their salary lets them have them.

5 hours ago, Codraroll said:

Downtown Des Moines primarily consists of a handful of large office buildings, a stadium, a convention center, and a hospital, and vast amounts of parking space where visitors can leave their cars while attending to their business downtown. Nobody lives there

Yes, that's wise.

5 hours ago, Codraroll said:

Where people live is in single-family houses

While their salary lets them have them.

The coming mass job automation, bringing mass unemployment (and as a result, the income cut), will effectively solve this problem, too.
No money - no mansion, no manor.

Public housing was invented not because the dwellers don't want to bother with family houses.
Some of them don't, but the vast majority would.

5 hours ago, Codraroll said:

single-family houses sprawling from the very edge of the downtown core and for a dozen or so miles until countryside takes over. One building per household, one driveway per building, a dozen or so driveways per street, a dozen or so streets per suburban subdivision, all housing and nothing else. No restaurants, no street cafes, no corner stores, not even a newsagent. Those are all wrapped up neatly inside giant, boxy malls or smaller, separate strip malls, both in their own zones, surrounded by further oceans of parking lots.

Yes, a wasteland with hypertrophied transport network for the only reason, a combination of low population density and excessive money.
Which money are brought either by high salary, or by business (some kind of local production).
Once a corporation had squashed the local production, the business pops and the income falls.
Once the automation lets pay less money from the fallen income, everything will be automated down to the last employee standing, the owner himself and his family.

So, it's not an achievement of the house owners, that they have that house.
It's just a temporary flaw of their job automation and small size of the business yet below a corporation radar and while their neighborhood has enough money to pay them for their work.

Once the Sauron Corp. eye sight falls on them, some will redress into the Sau Corp. colors and work for food, most of others will hope on the Sau Corp. welfare.
Including the municipal social apartments nicely built and granted by the Sau Corp. as a part of national free apartments program.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouse

But of course, without the horrific archaics.
Just by buying the houses for the price of apartments rent.

When somebody doesn't want, no problem. He can buy a bus, a gas company, a water company, and hire fis own policeman.
But such rich man is probably from the Sau Corp. tops, so he doesn't need this.

5 hours ago, Codraroll said:

Now try to draw up public transport lines in this thinly stretched mess.

Obviously. That's why the Sau Corp. will stack all that rural wasteland in layers, building a block of comfortable twenty-storey buildings instead of the bulky wooden huts for everyone, and calling it "townhouse" in "uptown".
Then turning the former "suburban area" into a green ecopark for all citizens.
And see! The total length of roads, pipes, and wires will immediately be reduced by an order of magnitude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Singapore

As well, they will have one big hospital instead  of twenty smaller ones.

And most of their activities will need no cars at all. Just an elevator to get to the ground, and feet or a freely rented social electric scooter to pass a halfmile and drop it there with no worry about parking.

Fiction? The V8 easy riders of 1960s also were thinking so.
Before 1970s came.

5 hours ago, Codraroll said:

So before public transit can be established, something needs to happen to the city planning.

Exactly. See above.

5 hours ago, Codraroll said:

Las Vegas is the worst offender, with an airport right in the middle of downtown and millions of visitors arriving every year for temporary stays in hotels not three miles away. The city even has a monorail line that runs between most of the hotels.

Yes, the 1% of people, of the Emploeyee status, will have money corporative subscription to visit it once per three months.
Others can play videogames for free or visit a free stadium in the municipal park.

***

P.S.
About the middle class.

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouse

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_plan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coworking

Quote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_labor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsourcing

Quote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumford's_Soup

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_food

Edited September 26, 2022 by kerbiloid

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

The search for nothing 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/26/physics-particles-physicists

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Weren't we just talking about Dino-Killing Asteroids?

Negative Waves, maaan.

 

Quote

 

The tsunami was powerful enough to create towering waves more than a mile high and scour the ocean floor thousands of miles away from where the asteroid hit, according to the study. It effectively wiped away the sediment record of what happened before the event, as well as during it.

“This tsunami was strong enough to disturb and erode sediments in ocean basins halfway around the globe, leaving either a gap in the sedimentary records or a jumble of older sediments,” said lead author Molly Range

 

 

Asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs also triggered a global tsunami | CNN

 

For further reading:

• Angle of Attack increased damage - Asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs hit at 'deadliest possible' angle - CNN
• Springtime event made it worse - The asteroid that doomed the dinosaurs struck in springtime | CNN
• Fossil graveyard linked to the event - A 'fossil graveyard' is linked to the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs, study says | CNN

 

[steve9728]

Abundant phosphorus expected for possible life in Enceladus’s ocean

Skip to Barotrauma, please

[Gargamel]

Well..:;. There’s this….

Lab-grown brain cells play video game Pong https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63195653

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

22 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Well..:;. There’s this….

Lab-grown brain cells play video game Pong https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63195653

Won't lie: equal measure of horror and fascination.

[Beamer]

5 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Won't lie: equal measure of horror and fascination.

Man creates machine. Machine creates brain. Brain becomes video game playing couch potato.

This isn't how I remember Frankenstein...

 

[Gargamel]

What I assumed from a 'main stream' media article was that it was, as usual, a real stretch in the headline.   But it was kinda accurate it seemed.

Reporter: "So you grew a brain that can play pong?"

Scientist: "Well, not really, we grew brain cells, added some interfaces, and then it played pong."

Reporter: "....... so you grew a brain that can play pong?"

Scientist: "No not really.... but sorta...."

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

@Gargamel

I believe you just described 'media'. 

[kerbiloid]

So, as they now can grow brains, the humans and zombies can peacefully live together and co-operate.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Neanderthal and Modern Humans overlapped for ~ 2800 years.

Modern humans and Neanderthals may have overlapped, shared culture in Western Europe | Science | AAAS

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Black Hole vomits old star years after eating it

Black hole burps up shredded star years after consuming it – Harvard Gazette

also:

 

Quote

 

colleagues have seen a much more extreme effect in a pair of black holes, caused by one of them spinning at a fifth of the speed of light at a 90-degree angle to its orbital motion. As they merged, the black holes released a gravitational wave, known as GW200129, that carried the signature of precession at a rate of three times a second.

“It’s 10 billion times faster than what was found in earlier measurements, so it really is the most extreme regime of Einstein’s theory where space and time are warped and distorted in completely crazy ways,” says Hannam.

“The astrophysical implications of the detection are quite significant,” says Fabio Antonini at Cardiff University, who wasn’t involved with the work. The extreme spin, and misalignment with its orbit, isn’t predicted by current ideas of black hole formation, which involve imploding stars, and needs another explanation, he says.

 

Black holes wobbling three times a second have proved Einstein right | New Scientist

Edited October 13, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[Minmus Taster]

Arecibo will not be rebuilt, not a shocker but the news is still a massive punch in the gut

Spoiler

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Quote

 

scavenging doesn’t fit into the traditional view of mummification.

“This assumption of rapid burial has been baked into the explanation for mummies for a while,” Drumheller says. That clearly wasn’t the case for Dakota. If scavengers had enough time to snack on its body, then the deceased dino had been out in the open for a while.

Observing Dakota’s deflated skin envelope, shrink-wrapped to the underlying bone with no muscle or other organs, Drumheller had an unexpected “eureka moment,” she says. “I had seen something like this before. It just wasn’t in the paleontological literature. It was in the forensics literature.”

When some smaller modern scavengers like raccoons feed on the internal organs of a larger carcass, the scavengers rip open the carcass’s body. The forensics research showed that this hole gives any gasses and fluids from further decomposition an escape route, allowing the remaining skin to dry out. Burial could happen afterward.

The researchers “make a very good point,” says Raymond Rogers, a researcher at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn., who studies how organisms decay and fossilize and wasn’t involved in the research. “It would be very unlikely for a carcass to achieve advanced stages of desiccation and also experience rapid burial. These two generally presumed prerequisites for mummification seem to be somewhat incompatible.”

 

Dinosaur 'mummies' may not be rare flukes after all (sciencenews.org)

[kerbiloid]

49 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Dinosaur 'mummies' may not be rare flukes after all (sciencenews.org)

 

Spoiler

Obviously.

A one more proof of long-lasting dyno-human co-existence.

 

[Beamer]

Largest Gamma Ray Burst ever detected, still ongoing:

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-just-detected-a-colossal-gamma-ray-burst-and-its-a-record-breaker

https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2224/

 

[wumpus]

21 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Dinosaur 'mummies' may not be rare flukes after all (sciencenews.org)

The Smithsonian Natural History museum used to include (well, on display.  I'm sure he's still in a warehouse out in PG county) an "accidental" mummy from Philadelphia (1800s?).  Some sulphur/calcium rich water was flowing through his coffin and the corpse was largely mummified.  No idea why he was later dug up and discovered.

So natural mummification can't be all that uncommon.

 

20 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Obviously.

A one more proof of long-lasting dyno-human co-existence.

https://xkcd.com/1211

Randal Monroe points out that a T-Rex is more closely related to modern birds than a stegosaurus.  So to get a mummified dinosaur all you really need to do is freeze-dry a sparrow.

[kerbiloid]

2 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Randal Monroe points out that a T-Rex is more closely related to modern birds than a stegosaurus.  So to get a mummified dinosaur all you really need to do is freeze-dry a sparrow.

I always address to the birds as "<...> reptiles", adding pejorative adjectives.

'cuz they are.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

You've heard of the GOAT... Welcome to the BOAT:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/17/world/gamma-ray-burst-detection-scn/index.html

In our research group, we’ve been referring to this burst as the ‘BOAT’, or Brightest Of All Time, because when you look at the thousands of bursts gamma-ray telescopes have been detecting since the 1990s, this one stands apart. 

... 

The Fermi telescope detected the burst for more than 10 hours

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/19/world/black-death-plague-immune-system-scn-wellness/index.html

So... People with really active immune systems can survive plague... But when there is no plague, it gets bored and starts messing with stuff it's not supposed to. 

Seems to be a common theme! 

 

Edited October 20, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Your tool using ancestors were knapping flint and eating animals in a cave in modern-day Poland 550,000 years ago.

Half-a-Million Year Old Signs of Extinct Human Species Found in Poland Cave : ScienceAlert

Quote

The tools from the Tunel Wielki cave in Małopolska are between 450,000 and 550,000 years old. This dating may allow scientists to learn more about the humans who made them, and their migration and habitation in Central Europe across prehistory.

...

Tunel Wielki cave was excavated in the 1960s, with archaeologists returning again to the site in 2016. Layers of material were dated to the Holocone, dating back to around 11,700 years ago, and the Middle Paleolithic, stretching as far as 40,000 years ago.

But archaeologist Claudio Berto of the University of Warsaw thought the dating was at odds with what he was observing. Animal bones recovered from the site, he concluded, were almost certainly older than 40,000 years.

So, in 2018, Kot and her team returned to the cave. They reopened and extended one of the trenches, carefully examining the different layers of material accumulated over the years, and collecting more bone material to analyze.

They found that the upper layers did indeed contain the bones of animals that lived in the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene. But the bottom layer was distinctly older. It contained the bones of several species that lived half a million years ago: the European jaguar, Panthera gombaszoegensis; the Mosbach wolf, ancestor to modern gray wolves, Canis mosbachensis; and Deninger's bear, Ursus deningeri.

The layer that yielded the bones also contained evidence of flint knapping, including flint flakes, the "blanks" from which other tools can be shaped, and the cores from which they are struck. There were also some finished tools, such as knives.