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

[DDE]

5 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Hawaii lights up.  First time since 1984.

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/worlds-largest-active-volcano-mauna-loa-erupts-hawaii-not-publish-pre-rcna54571

To be fair, it's been grumbling for a while now. 

Because back in my single-digit years I had a NatGeo VHS on volcanos that spent 90% of the film covering Hawaii eruptions, I struggle to recognize this as an unusual occurence.

This was literally my first time seeing a video of lava.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

If you want to see how big an event a volcanic eruption is... 

This is from Oahu, 200 miles away from the Kilauea eruption. 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/05/17/hawaii-volcano-honolulu-eruptions-seem-close-and-far-away/620015002/

 

EDIT -- I strongly suspect this was NOT taken on Ohau.

 

Edited November 28, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

It's scary how close we've gotten to the power of mother nature.

While visually similar - according to some studies, comparing volcanoes to Nuclear Weapons explosions can be misleading to the point of being useless.

Comparison of Mount Saint Helens volcanic eruption to a nuclear explosion. Technical note (Technical Report) | OSTI.GOV @SunlitZelkova - I think you'll like this blurb:

Quote

It is concluded that the phenomena are not analogous. In particular, airblast destruction was caused by clouds of ash driven by subsonic winds, rather than by a supersonic shock wave that would be the damage mechanism of a nuclear explosion. Because of the lack of analogy between the eruption and nuclear explosion phenomena, it appears questionable that any of the effects are analogous; therefore, it is unlikely that anything more of military interest can be gained from studying the effects of the eruption

Comparison of Mount Saint Helens volcanic eruption to a nuclear explosion. Technical note (Technical Report) | OSTI.GOV

 

But - we are not 'weapons planners' so I'll ignore that for now.

 

This is Mt. St. Helens from 35 miles away:

*"The ash cloud produced by the eruption, as seen from the village of Toledo, Washington, 35 miles (56 km) away, northwest from Mount St. Helens." Courtesy of Rocky Kolberg/Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 3.0*

 Independent theoretical and empirical analyses indicate that the explosive yield of the eruption was approximately 35 megatons.

Mount St. Helens Eruption of 18 May 1980: Air Waves and Explosive Yield | Science

For a point of comparison, this is a photo of Castle Bravo - 

On March 1, 1954, it was the highest yield test in the United States’ highest-yield nuclear test series, exploding with a force of 15 million tons of TNT. It was also the greatest single radiological disaster in American history. 

Castle BRAVO, 62 seconds after detonation. “This image was take at a distance of 50 [nautical miles]

north GZ from an altitude of 10,000 feet. The lines running upward to the left of the stem and below

the fireball are smoke trails from small rockets. At this time the cloud stem was about 4 mi in diameter.”

From DTRIAC SR-12-001.

 

[kerbiloid]

8 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

It is concluded that the phenomena are not analogous. In particular, airblast destruction was caused by clouds of ash driven by subsonic winds, rather than by a supersonic shock wave that would be the damage mechanism of a nuclear explosion.

And the Orodruin explosion looks same, as Frodo & Sam escaped by the eagles rather than in a cloud.

***

8 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Spoiler

 

Clouds are clouds, just vertical and big.

[SunlitZelkova]

14 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

This is Mt. St. Helens from 35 miles away:

My grandpa and uncle got off the mountain just a day before it blew, and may have had a view akin to this as IIRC they were still on the road and had not yet returned home to the Seattle area at the time of the eruption.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

My grandpa and uncle got off the mountain just a day before it blew, and may have had a view akin to this as IIRC they were still on the road and had not yet returned home to the Seattle area at the time of the eruption.

Wow! 

Closest I got was Rainier the year before it blew - memorable because we were above the clouds and looking South we could see several peaks thrusting through.  (flat plain of white cloud and a blisteringly blue sky above.). Each peak looked like an island. 

My mom told us that every mountain we could see was a different volcano and the Park Ranger named all of them for us - St Helen's being notably close.  Hood was visible, too. At the time I was more amazed to be seeing Oregon than anything. 

Went to the same spot years later and while it was cloudless, it was amazing to see just how 'gone' St Helen's was. 

For a while we kept a jar of ash. I try to explain how significant it was to my kids... And fail. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Quote

 

Two minerals that have never been seen before on Earth have been discovered inside a massive meteorite in Somalia. They could hold important clues to how asteroids form.

"Whenever you find a new mineral, it means that the actual geological conditions, the chemistry of the rock, was different than what's been found before," Chris Herd, a professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta, said in a statement. "That's what makes this exciting: In this particular meteorite you have two officially described minerals that are new to science." 

However, future scientific insights from the El Ali meteorite could be in peril. The meteorite has now been moved to China in search of a potential buyer, which could limit researchers' access to the space rock for investigation.

 

 

Two minerals never before been seen on Earth found inside 17-ton meteorite (msn.com)

[Beamer]

First time the Chinese Tiangong Space station has had a hand-over from one crew to the next, it is assumed that from this point forward it will remain permanently occupied.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/29/china_tiangong_crewed_handover/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-latest-rocket-sends-new-crew-to-finish-tiangong-space-station-11669747788

 

[steve9728]

Apart from mine, oil field and solar panels fields, I have a feeling that the idea of this thing might even can be applied to Mars.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/30/world/mind-control-parasite-toxoplasmosis-wolves-scn/index.html

 

This is cool - and creepy. 

"When it comes to evolutionary survival, T. gondii is optimized for cats and their prey, but other animals can get caught in the biochemical crossfire, with similar behavior-altering results. Even humans can be affected. Some behavioral changes — including taking risks in business, road rage and even schizophrenia — may be associated with T. gondii infection. And now, a recent study in the journal Communications Biology has shown the first evidence of T. gondii’s effect on gray wolves"

[tater]

(Curiosity)

[Gargamel]

7 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/30/world/mind-control-parasite-toxoplasmosis-wolves-scn/index.html

 

This is cool - and creepy. 

"When it comes to evolutionary survival, T. gondii is optimized for cats and their prey, but other animals can get caught in the biochemical crossfire, with similar behavior-altering results. Even humans can be affected. Some behavioral changes — including taking risks in business, road rage and even schizophrenia — may be associated with T. gondii infection. And now, a recent study in the journal Communications Biology has shown the first evidence of T. gondii’s effect on gray wolves"

It’s one of the (many) reasons for crazy cat ladies.   And gents, but I believe females are more susceptible to the parasite.   

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Um... 

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/01/world/scientists-baby-wormhole-scli-intl-scn/index.html

"Researchers announced on Wednesday that they forged two minuscule simulated black holes – those extraordinarily dense celestial objects with gravity so powerful that not even light can escape – in a quantum computer and transmitted a message between them through what amounted to a tunnel in space-time.

It was a “baby wormhole,” according to Caltech physicist Maria Spiropulu, a co-author of the research published in the journal Nature. But scientists are a long way from being able to send people or other living beings through such a portal, she said."

[Gargamel]

2 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Um... 

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/01/world/scientists-baby-wormhole-scli-intl-scn/index.html

"Researchers announced on Wednesday that they forged two minuscule simulated black holes – those extraordinarily dense celestial objects with gravity so powerful that not even light can escape – in a quantum computer and transmitted a message between them through what amounted to a tunnel in space-time.

It was a “baby wormhole,” according to Caltech physicist Maria Spiropulu, a co-author of the research published in the journal Nature. But scientists are a long way from being able to send people or other living beings through such a portal, she said."

Oooohhh... I can't wait for the videos from people explaining what they actually did and not what the headlines are reporting.   There's always another couple layers to stories like these. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

10 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Oooohhh... I can't wait for the videos from people explaining what they actually did and not what the headlines are reporting.   There's always another couple layers to stories like these. 

I verrrry nearly did not post this... but CalTech.

So if there is one - I'd also be interested in their reply!

[Beamer]

22 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Oooohhh... I can't wait for the videos from people explaining what they actually did and not what the headlines are reporting.   There's always another couple layers to stories like these. 

What they actually did was create a quantum state that mimics the properties of a wormhole. No actual wormholes were involved. To me it sounds a lot like one of those "Look what we did, give us a grant! Blockchain! Metaverse! Crypto!" articles. As they described it: "a quantum system that exhibits key properties of a gravitational wormhole but was small enough to implement on existing quantum hardware." It goes beyond my knowledge of quantum computing to determine if it is actually some kind of breakthrough in that field but I'm pretty sure the assertion that "they created a wormhole" is just pertinently false.

Edit: since CNN doesn't seem to link to the source, here's the abstract of the actual Nature article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05424-3

 

Edited December 1, 2022 by Beamer

[RKunze]

1 hour ago, Beamer said:

What they actually did was create a quantum state that mimics the properties of a wormhole. No actual wormholes were involved

If I'm not mistaken (could be, though, that stuff is far above my knowledge level), they created a quantum model that is equivalent to a wormhole in a 1+1 dimensional anti-DeSitter spacetime (a toy universe, to put it plainly). Using a mathematical model that nobody got to work yet in a 3+1 DeSitter spacetime (our universe) - and quite a number oft scientists suspect that this model actually can't work for  the real world.

1 hour ago, Beamer said:

To me it sounds a lot like one of those "Look what we did, give us a grant! Blockchain! Metaverse! Crypto!" articles

Yep. Exactly.

[HebaruSan]

46 minutes ago, Beamer said:

No actual wormholes were involved. To me it sounds a lot like one of those "Look what we did, give us a grant! Blockchain! Metaverse! Crypto!" articles.

It reminds me of the articles about "time crystals" a little while back, in which researchers used lasers to vibrate some material in a particular pattern, but the articles suggested this somehow represented an additional dimension of time, and the headlines went even further over the top. Scientific clickbait. See also, pretty much any reference to "quantum teleportation," which often is explained to be not-actually-teleportation, which the next paragraph conveniently forgets.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, HebaruSan said:

Scientific clickbait

Just watched this last week:

(Speaking of Quantum Computing)

Edited December 2, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, Beamer said:

Blockchain! Metaverse! Crypto!

"It suddenly appeared that 'to store your data in the cloud' actually means ''to put your data on a somebody's else computer, you don't know whose and where." (c)

[kerbiloid]

NASA has contracted the ICON company for 57.5 M$, to develop the Olympus project for lunar/martian base building technologies. using 3d printing and local (lunar, not NASAn) resources.

Spoiler

 

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Smart primates using fire predates modern humans. 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/homo-naledi-pre-human-ancestor-fire-tool-south-africa/

" A non-human creature dubbed Homo naledi was discovered nearly a decade ago — and researchers now believe the creature may have had a head start on Homo sapiens, or humans, in using fire as a tool.

... 

Renowned paleoanthropologist Lee Berger drew sharp criticism for hypothesizing Homo naledi was deliberately placing its dead in a dark, dangerous underground chamber in the Rising Star caves just outside Johannesburg, South Africa. Some argued it wasn't possible to navigate the complex chamber without light

... the reason they didn't believe it was because Homo naledi, with its tiny little brain just bigger than a chimpanzee, couldn't have had fire," 

...

The controlled use of fire was supposedly unique to humans, and for nearly 10 years Berger's team found no evidence the species used fire — until

... "I looked up. And I realized the ceiling was black. It was burnt. It was covered in soot. It had been right above our heads the entire time," Berger said of his discovery.

 

It's undeniable evidence of fire. The same day, lead investigator and paleoanthropologist Keneiloe Molopyane was making another remarkable find nearby: "Pieces of bone ... burnt bone," she said, which indicated they were eating there. 

 

After that, the team saw fire everywher e.

 

 

[kerbiloid]

Quote

Renowned paleoanthropologist Lee Berger drew sharp criticism for hypothesizing Homo naledi was deliberately placing its dead in a dark, dangerous underground chamber

Like any meat.
Did they have a fridge?

Quote

"And the reason they didn't believe it was because Homo naledi, with its tiny little brain just bigger than a chimpanzee, couldn't have had fire,"

Everyone has seen primates with similar brain. They definitely can have fire. Otherwise how could they smoke?

Spoiler

 

But what does it mean "to have the fire" when spoken by an archaeologist? 
To make fire from scratch? To use a found fire? How exactly? Transport it? Keep it firing? Throw meat into a natural fire and wait?

Quote

"I looked up. And I realized the ceiling was black. It was burnt. It was covered in soot. It had been right above our heads the entire time," Berger said of his discovery.

Spoiler

Look, sooted ceiling and stalactites.

The humans were definitely using fire in this cave.

Or that cave was sooted due to a ocasional fire.

Quote

"Pieces of bone ... burnt bone," she said, which indicated they were eating there. 

Of course they did. Should they let the meat of their tribe member just be lost only because he died in a burning forest?

Quote

"One of the reasons that humans are so harmful to the environment, to this world, is because we think we have some ownership of it," he said.

And as we can see in this cave, the apes were not better.

***

Another fast hype sensation until a chimp starts using Zippo.

Edited December 2, 2022 by kerbiloid

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

39 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

chimp starts using Zippo

Well, they also use AK-47 (meme)

[Beamer]

ArsTechnica did an enlightening story on the wormholes:

Quote

"It’s not the real thing; it’s not even close to the real thing; it’s barely even a simulation of something-not-close-to-the-real-thing," physicist Matt Strassler wrote on his blog. "Could this method lead to a simulation of a real wormhole someday? Maybe in the distant future. Could it lead to making a real wormhole? Never. Don’t get me wrong. What they did is pretty cool! But the hype in the press? Wildly, spectacularly overblown."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/12/no-physicists-didnt-make-a-real-wormhole-what-they-did-was-still-pretty-cool/