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Nature: "So, you get eight legs."
Spider: "Do I need eight legs?"
Nature: "To say the truth, nobody needs eight of something."
Spider: "?"
Nature: "..."
Spider: "???"
Nature: "Here you get also eight eyes and a thread from your <wordfilter>"
Spider: "..."

 

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This Ultradense Asteroid May Contain Elements We’ve Never Seen Before
A new study suggests that atoms could be stable at atomic number 164, which could help explain recent measurements of the ultradense asteroid 33 Polyhymnia.
BY DARREN ORFPUBLISHED: OCT 13, 2023
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/solar-system/a45522962/new-element-asteroid/#

 Not saying it’s aliens but …    ;-)

Bob Clark

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2 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

This Ultradense Asteroid May Contain Elements We’ve Never Seen Before
A new study suggests that atoms could be stable at atomic number 164, which could help explain recent measurements of the ultradense asteroid 33 Polyhymnia.
BY DARREN ORFPUBLISHED: OCT 13, 2023
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/solar-system/a45522962/new-element-asteroid/#

 Not saying it’s aliens but …    ;-)

Bob Clark

Perhaps a few specks of neutronium?

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18 hours ago, DDE said:

CUDOs to them, but I'd be more excited about a primordial black hole.

But that should consume the asteroid. Most likely its an error as they found the mass calculating how it affect other asteroids and its error margins here. 
Flag as weird.

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11 hours ago, magnemoe said:

But that should consume the asteroid.

Apparently because of how they behave, emitting more radiation as they starve, which evaporates the insides of the asteroid and "feeds" them, they'll achieve a sort of a stable condition after they hollow the asteroid out.

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In case anyone didn't already know, stay the frack away from fructose!

Layman's article: Major Study Claims to Identify The Root Cause of Obesity: Fructose : ScienceAlert

Actual study linked in above article: The fructose survival hypothesis as a mechanism for unifying the various obesity hypotheses (wiley.com)

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8 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

In case anyone didn't already know, stay the frack away from fructose!

Layman's article: Major Study Claims to Identify The Root Cause of Obesity: Fructose : ScienceAlert

Actual study linked in above article: The fructose survival hypothesis as a mechanism for unifying the various obesity hypotheses (wiley.com)

And stay active.  If you are sedentary but eat like a laborer you will pay a high price.  But quantity/quality of food aside, physical activity is the foundation for a lot of our metabolism from cellular level up to the entire circulatory and respiratory functions, even brain and nervous system.  All designed around motion  in so many ways

Edited by darthgently
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  • 2 weeks later...

Pilot power plant utilising supercritical CO2 turbine completed.

This is very cool stuff. Supercritical CO2 not only makes the turbines 10% more efficient, it allows them to be smaller. Much smaller. Like, ten times smaller. If a normal 10MW steam turbine is the size of two tyres off one of those giant mining trucks stuck together, this is able to fit into its passenger seat.

Spoiler

img-7738-john-klaerner-jeff-moore.jpg

The US is very interested in these for making concentrating solar power more efficient. It also makes the whole plant much smaller and uses less water, whatever you use for heat.

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https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/marshall/nasas-innovative-rocket-nozzle-paves-way-for-deep-space-missions/

A new aluminium alloy was used to 3D-print rocket nozzles with integral cooling channels. Exciting, because aluminium is pretty abundant and lightweight; the alloy itself seems to be a tweak of 6061, which is ~98% aluminium with magnesium, silicon and some trace elements, none of them cripplingly rare on the Moon.

It's interesting because I remember seeing aluminium rocket engines proposed for the miniaturised 'Mockingbird' SSTO, as well as the departed XCOR Aerospace trying much the same 3D-printed thing a decade earlier.

They're clearly getting some good results, as running it on methalox and hydrolox, for 10 minutes, with 22 restarts and at chamber pressures of 56 bar (the RL10-C runs at 102bar) makes for a convincing expression of confidence; good for lunar lander engine, boost stage or clustered for medium-lift rocket. I don't know what the powerhead would be, though.

They're even printing aerospikes with integral cooling channels, which has possibilities when you run it alongside expander cycle.

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14 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Mysteriously, the Soviet anthem was sounding from heaven while the red flag was illuminating the skies...

According to my pen pal Lev, a hammer and sickle shaped UFO was spotted near Ulyanovsk. He sent me a picture, but the spirit of Marx overwhelmed me and warned me not to share it, so I won't.

Spoiler

Of course, this is in itself a psychic UFO incident, because Marx was an alien.

 

Edited by SunlitZelkova
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17 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Mysteriously, the Soviet anthem was sounding from heaven while the red flag was illuminating the skies...

To be fair, at Bryansk (which is in the tri-border area) it looked suspiciously like the Belarusian flag.

a34a542d7bb630d7366d4161746cc82a.jpg

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5 hours ago, DDE said:

To be fair, at Bryansk (which is in the tri-border area) it looked suspiciously like the Belarusian flag.

22 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Soviet

So, that's correct.

1 hour ago, darthgently said:

From an admittedly US pov, the red one looks more like watermelon Jolly Rancher while the other looks like watermelon next to sour apple Jolly Rancher.  No flags seen..

Any stars were seen from there?

Spoiler

640px-Confederate_Rebel_Flag.svg.png


 

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laniakea-2000x1200.jpg

If You Account for the Laniakea Supercluster, The Hubble Tension Might Be Even Larger

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When the team measured the gravitational influence of the supercluster as a whole, they found it does bias our observations by about 2% – 3%. But it’s biased in the wrong direction. In other words, by not taking the effect of Laniakea into account, the Hubble tension seemed smaller than it actually is. These new results show that the tension is 2% – 3% greater than we thought. Even some of the more recent Hubble constant measurements that seemed encouraging aren’t enough to account for the Laniakea bias.

 

https://www.universetoday.com/164198/if-you-account-for-the-laniakea-supercluster-the-hubble-tension-might-be-even-larger/

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Also, for those interested, I just discovered another tension wrt the standard model of cosmology (LambdaCDM), called the 'S8 Tension' .*

JMrMECekk2Yn7ffpiDSnp6-1200-80.png.webp

 

The S8 tension is fairly simple to explain: it is a parameter used in simulations of dark matter that characterizes how 'lumpy' or strongly clustered the matter in the universe is.  The value can be derived from measurements of low-redshift observations, like 'weak gravitational lensing surveys'.  (Observational).  The value can also be predicted via the standard model - by tuning the model to match known properties of the Cosmic Microwave Background.  The problem is that CMB experiments find a higher value of S8 than do weak gravitational lensing surveys.  Cosmologists don't know why, hence the 'tension'.

Anyway, the S8 tension just got more interesting after the FLAMINGO group decided to do something novel. 

Most simulations of dark matter seeking to emulate the observed supercluster and filaments seen in the universe only consider the effects of dark matter - they don't try to include baryonic matter in the simulation.  The FLAMINGO** group did.

Because DM is only affected by gravity, adding in normal baryonic matter - which is affected not only by gravity, but also gas pressure (winds driven by supernova explosions and actively accreting supermassive black holes, for example) changed the result of the simulation in unexpected ways.

Quote

...even the new work's consideration of ordinary matter as well as some of the most extreme galactic winds was not sufficient to explain the weak clumping of matter observed in the present-day universe.

"Here I am at a loss," Schaye told Space.com. "An exciting possibility is that the tension is pointing to shortcomings in the standard model of cosmology, or even the standard model of physics."

https://www.space.com/largest-computer-simulation-of-universe-s8-debate

Quote

A number of recent studies have found evidence for a tension between observations of large-scale structure (LSS) and the predictions of the standard model of cosmology with the cosmological parameters fit to the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The origin of this ‘S8 tension’ remains unclear, but possibilities include new physics beyond the standard model, unaccounted for systematic errors in the observational measurements and/or uncertainties in the role that baryons play.

Quote

...

We emphasize, however, that the most strongly discrepant power spectrum we examined is the Planck tSZ effect power spectrum, which is primarily sensitive to low-redshift, massive clusters which are baryonically closed, dominated by hot gas, and for which X-ray and tSZ surveys are typically highly complete. Increasing feedback at higher redshifts will not significantly impact this metric.

If neither feedback nor unaccounted for (or mischaracterized) systematic errors are behind the tension (though it will require additional work to conclusively demonstrate the latter), then the exciting implication would appear to be that new physics, perhaps in the dark sector, is required.

(emphasis mine)

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/526/4/5494/7310881

I find these tensions fascinating areas of cosmology to read about.  They remind me that physics and cosmology are not 'complete' sciences, where everything is known.  Researchers are constantly 'picking at the edges' and finding discrepancies.  I'm also glad to see them getting published.  There was a period of time about 30 years ago where any time anyone questioned the LCDM model, they were mocked and shouted down (on boards like these - looking at you, BadAstronomy).  Dogmatic thinking isn't useful in science.

 

*Freely admit, I don't know much about it - but it is interesting. 

**FLAMINGO is a project of the Virgo consortium for cosmological supercomputer simulations. The acronym stands for Full-hydro Large-scale structure simulations with All-sky Mapping for the Interpretation of Next Generation Observations.

FLAMINGO Project - Videos:  https://flamingo.strw.leidenuniv.nl/video_gallery.html  Really beautiful and trippy simulations!

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