**Science Thread**

[marcus300]

Going to post some recent science developments in the world so if your interested please add your comments or articles of interest.

Hope you enjoy

[marcus300]

Humans may need fake gravity to reach Mars without brain damage, warns scientists



Astronauts travelling to Mars could be in weakened gravity for three years or more.

Nasa may need to invent a spaceship with artificial gravity before humans can venture to Mars, after a new study found weightlessness causes worrying changes in the brain.

A mission to the Red Planet is fraught with technical challenges, but the real difficulties may lie in getting astronauts their with their minds intact.

Alarming new research, funded by Nasa, has found that microgravity causes the brains of astronauts to shift upwards and become squashed at the top of their skulls, piling pressure on vital neural regions.

Crucially, the parts of the brain that are most affected - the frontal and parietal lobes - control movement of the body and higher executive function, which are essential for attention, focus, planning, organising and remembering details.

They are also the regions linked to pro-social behaviour which help people avoid making hurtful or inappropriate comments.

Researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) said urgent work was needed to gauge the impact of the brain damage and find out how long it lasted after a mission, particularly as commercial companies are already planning on taking civilians into space.

Dr Michael Antonucci, at the Department of Radiology and Radiological Science at MUSC said: “Impaired executive function could affect astronaut performance. Any change to a region of the brain that controls the way we sense our environment and our ability to interact with it raises concerns.




Nearly all of the astronauts who flew on the ISS suffered brain shift: NASA
However, how these would work in a microgravity environment is uncertain.

“Designing a space vehicle with artificial gravity might be a way of minimizing the changes that occur in a microgravity environment.”

Although artificial-gravity still lies firmly in the realms of science fiction, theoretically, spinning a space station would create enough centrifugal force to create the effect of being pinned to the surface.

For the new study, the team examined the brains of participants who stayed in bed for 90 days, and were required to keep their heads continuously tilted in a downward position to simulate the effects of microgravity.

They also checked brain scans from 18 astronauts who spent a few weeks aboard Nasa’s space shuttle, and compared them with 16 astronauts who had spent an average of three months in the International Space Station.

Brain scans showed a narrowing of the bumps and depressions in the brain folds in the bed-ridden participants, 94 per cent of the ISS astronauts, but only 18 per cent of the shuttle crews.

There was also evidence of brain shifting up into the inner roof of the skull.


Dr Donna Roberts, second from left, joins her MUSC research team Dr Marc Chimowitz, left to right, Davud Asemani, Dr Michael Antonucci, Dr Maria Vittoria Spampinato, Dr Arindam Rano Chatterjee, Corie Lynn and Judith Yost

Dr Dan Brown, senior astronomy lecturer at Nottingham Trent University said: “This isn’t something you would want on a long mission. Astronauts suffering this sort of impairment wouldn’t be able to see close-up objects, read manuals or carry out basic research to any decent standard.

“It could also change elements of perception and conception in the brain which could have serious implications.

“It’s important that humans are able to continuing exploring unchartered regions and I think we will get there.”

A journey to Mars can take three to six months, and crews would be expected to stay for two years until the planetary alignment allowed for a journey home. It means crews would be in reduced gravity for around three years.

To date, the longest continuous time in space was 438 days, a record held by Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov.

Dr Donna Roberts, a neuroradiologist at MUSC, said: “Exposure to the space environment has permanent effects on humans that we simply do not understand. What astronauts experience in space must be mitigated to produce safer space travel for the public.

"We know these long-duration flights take a big toll on the astronauts and cosmonauts, however, we don't know if the adverse effects on the body continue to progress or if they stabilize after some time in space.”

Dr Roberts hopes to continue to collect long-term follow-up data on the astronauts already being studied.

The effects of spaceflight on the human body have been studied actively since the mid-20th century and it is widely known that microgravity influences metabolism, heat regulation, heart rhythm, muscle tone, bone density, the respiration system.

Last year research from the US also found that astronauts who travelled into deep space on lunar missions were five times more likely to have died from cardiovascular disease than those who went into low orbit, or never left Earth.

Russian researchers have also discovered alarming changes to the immune systems of cosmonauts, suggesting that they would struggle to shake off even a minor virus, like the common cold.


The research was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

[marcus300]

Artist’s rendering of a cross-section of the Great Pyramid showing the newly discovered void (represented as a white area) above the large inclined corridor known as grand gallery.

Cosmic rays reveal unknown void in the Great Pyramid of Giza

Some 4500 years ago, the ancient Egyptians built the Great Pyramid of Giza as a tomb for the pharaoh Khufu, also known as Cheops, one that would ferry him to the afterlife. Now, using subatomic particles raining down from the heavens, a team of physicists has found a previously unknown cavity within Khufu’s great monument.

“Such a big void can’t be an accident,” says Mehdi Tayoubi, president of the non-profit Heritage Innovation Preservation Institute in Paris, who led the research. The discovery has already stirred the interest of archaeologists and particle physicists alike.

Made of an estimated 2.3 million stone blocks and standing 140 meters tall and 230 meters wide, the Great Pyramid is an engineering mystery, much like its two smaller sister pyramids, Khafre’s and Menkaure’s. Archaeologists know that it was built for Khufu, who died in 2566 B.C.E. But they have long wondered exactly how the pyramid was constructed and structured.


Now, archaeologists are getting help from an unlikely source: cosmic rays, subatomic particles that rain down from space. In fact, a team of physicists has found a previously unknown void within the pyramid by imaging it with muons, high-energy byproducts of cosmic rays that are created when protons and other atomic nuclei strike the atmosphere.

Every minute, tens of thousands of muons pass through each square meter of Earth. The particles are much like electrons but 207 times as massive. Because they’re so heavy, the negatively charged particles can travel through hundreds of meters of stone before being absorbed—whereas electrons make it only a few centimeters. So just as doctors use x-rays to look into our bodies, physicists can use muons to peek into thick structures—from volcanoes to disabled nuclear power plants. To do that, all researchers need to do is to place a muon detector, such as tile-sized special photographic films, underneath, within, or near an object and count the number of muons coming through the thing in different directions.

One of the first times scientists used muon imaging was to search for hidden chambers in Khafre’s pyramid at Giza in the late 1960s. None was discovered. This time around, after a 2016 experiment revealed anomalies that could indicate something behind its walls, scientists set out to image Khufu’s pyramid. To do that they placed various direction-sensitive muon detectors in the queen’s chamber and in an adjacent corridor within the pyramid and at its base on the north side, and analyzed the collected data every 2 to 5 months. As proof of principle, they confirmed the presence of three known large cavities: the queen’s and king’s chambers, and a long corridor that connects them, known as the grand gallery.

But, just above the grand gallery the researchers also spotted a new void area, they report today in Nature. The new cavity is nearly 8 meters high, 2 meters wide, and at least 30 meters long—like a cathedral, but much narrower—and it rises 20 meters above the ground in the pyramid’s core.

The scientists have “seen” the void using three different muon detectors in three independent experiments, which makes their finding very robust, says Lee Thompson, an expert in particle physics at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom who was not involved in the work. But the cavity’s detailed structure remains unclear: It might be one or many adjacent compartments, and could be horizontal or slanted.

At this stage, the cavity’s function can only be guessed. Because it is inaccessible, it probably isn’t a burial chamber, says archaeologist Mark Lehner, director of Ancient Egypt Research Associates in Boston, who was not involved in the research. “It’s not the ideal place to contain a body,” he says. It could have purely symbolic meaning, as a passage for the pharaoh’s soul, Tayoubi says.

Zahi Hawass, an Egyptologist based in Cairo who chairs the committee that reviewed the research project, cautions against calling the cavity a “secret room,” as pyramid builders often left large gaps between stone blocks, a construction strategy that makes the pyramid’s core look like Swiss cheese. The void might simply have served to relieve the weight of the stone blocks above the grand gallery to preserve it from collapse, like the five compartments, stacked on top of each other, that protect the king’s chamber in the same pyramid, Lehner says.

To answer questions about the cavity’s structure and function, the researchers hope to do more muon imaging experiments with finer resolution. This means placing more detectors inside and near the pyramid that collect data for longer—up to several years, Tayoubi says. Understanding the detailed structure of the cavity could also help determine how the Great Pyramid was built in the first place, whether using external ramps or internal passages through which stone blocks were carried to the higher levels of the structure.

Until then, the new finding, although “impressive,” doesn’t dramatically change the way we think about pyramids, Lehner says. But other scientists, such as particle physicist Guido Saracino of the University of Naples Federico II in Italy, are thrilled. According to Saracino, this work confirms that particle physics can have important practical applications, including archaeological surveys. And one day it may help scientists figure out how the ancient pyramids were built.


Posted in: Archaeology,
Physics

[marcus300]

Footprints of Megatheropod Dinosaur Found in Lesotho



Dr. Knoll lies next to the exceptionally large carnivorous dinosaur footprints found in Lesotho

Footprints of a previously unknown, very large carnivorous dinosaur have been found on an ancient land surface — known as a palaeosurface — in the Maseru District of Lesotho, Africa.

The newly-discovered three-toed footprints, named Kayentapus ambrokholohali, are 22 inches (57 cm) long and 20 inches (50 cm) wide.

They belong to a megatheropod (giant two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs, such as the iconic Tyrannosaurus rex) that lived 200 million year ago in southern Africa.

University of Manchester paleontologist Fabien Knoll and co-authors estimate that the dinosaur was a little less than 10 feet (3 m) tall and 30 feet (9 m) long, which is smaller than T. rex.

“This discovery is very exciting and sheds new light on the kind of carnivore that roamed what is now southern Africa,” Dr. Knoll said.

“That’s because it is the first evidence of an extremely large meat-eating animal roaming a landscape otherwise dominated by a variety of herbivorous, omnivorous and much smaller carnivorous dinosaurs. It really would have been top of the food chain.”

What makes the discovery even more important is that these footprints date back to the Early Jurassic epoch, when it was thought the size of most theropod dinosaurs was considerably smaller.

On average they were previously thought to be around 10-16 feet (3-5 m) in body length, with some records showing they may have reached 23 feet (7 m) at the very most.

It is only much later in the Jurassic and during the Cretaceous, which starts 145 million years ago, that truly large forms of theropods, such as T. rex, appear in body and trace fossil records.

“This discovery marks the first occurrence of very large carnivorous dinosaurs in the Early Jurassic of southern Gondwana,” said Dr. Lara Sciscio, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cape Town.

“This makes it a significant find. Globally, these large tracks are very rare. There is only one other known site similar in age and sized tracks, which is in Poland.”

The ancient surface where these footprints were found is also covered with the tracks of much smaller theropod dinosaurs.

“In South Africa, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Namibia, there is good record of theropod footprints from the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic epochs,” Dr. Knoll said.

“In fact, there are numerous palaeosurfaces where footprints and even tail and body impressions of these, and other animals, can be found. But now we have evidence this region of Africa was also home to a mega-carnivore.”

A paper reporting this discovery is published in the journal PLoS ONE

[marcus300]

Hubble Discovers Titanium Dioxide Snow Falling on Hot Jupiter Kepler-13Ab

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has found a blistering hot-Jupiter exoplanet where it ‘snows’ titanium dioxide, the active ingredient in sunscreen. The Hubble observations are the first detections of this ‘snow-out’ process — called a ‘cold trap’ — on an exoplanet.

This illustration shows Kepler-13Ab that circles very close to its host star, Kepler-13A. In the background is the star’s binary companion, Kepler-13B, and the third member of the multiple-star system is the orange dwarf star Kepler-13C: NASA / ESA / G. Bacon, STScI.

The giant exoplanet in question, called Kepler-13Ab, is approximately 1,730 light-years from Earth and is nearly 6 times more massive than Jupiter.

Penn State astronomer Dr. Thomas Beatty and co-authors targeted Kepler-13Ab because it is one of the hottest of the known planets, with a dayside temperature of nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius).

Kepler-13Ab is so close to its parent star, Kepler-13A, that it is tidally locked, so one side always faces the star while the other side is in permanent darkness.

The astronomers discovered that titanium dioxide snowfall happens only on the planet’s nighttime side.

“Powerful winds carry the titanium oxide gas around to the colder nighttime side, where it condenses into crystalline flakes, forms clouds, and precipitates as snow,” they explained.

“Kepler-13Ab’s strong surface gravity — about 6 times greater than Jupiter’s — pulls the titanium oxide snow out of the upper atmosphere and traps it in the lower atmosphere.”

These kinds of observations provide insight into the complexity of weather and atmospheric composition on exoplanets, and may someday be applicable to analyzing Earth-size planets for habitability.

“In many ways, the atmospheric studies we’re doing now on these gaseous ‘hot Jupiter’ kinds of planets are test beds for how we’re going to do atmospheric studies of terrestrial, Earth-like planets,” Dr. Beatty said.

“Understanding more about the atmospheres of these planets and how they work will help us when we study smaller planets that are harder to see and have more complicated features in their atmospheres.”

This is an artist’s impression of Kepler-13Ab as compared in size to several planets in our Solar System. Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Feild, STScI.

“Understanding what sets the climates of other worlds has been one of the big puzzles of the last decade,” said Penn State astronomer Dr. Jason Wright.

“Seeing this cold-trap process in action provides us with a long sought and important piece of that puzzle.”

The Hubble observations confirm a theory from several years ago that this kind of precipitation could occur on massive, hot planets with powerful gravity.

“Presumably, this precipitation process is happening on most of the observed hot Jupiters, but those gas giants all have lower surface gravities than Kepler-13Ab,” Dr. Beatty said.

“The titanium oxide snow doesn’t fall far enough in those atmospheres, and then it gets swept back to the hotter dayside, revaporizes, and returns to a gaseous state.”

The findings are published in the Astronomical Journal.

[MuscleScience]

Good idea!

[marcus300]

Paleoanthropologists Find Evidence of Neanderthal Dentistry



University of Kansas Professor David Frayer and co-authors have discovered multiple toothpick grooves on teeth of a Neanderthal individual who lived 130,000 years ago in what is now Croatia.

Prof. Frayer’s team analyzed four isolated but associated mandibular teeth from the left side of the Neanderthal’s mouth.

The teeth (left P4 – M3) were collected more than a century ago from the Krapina Neanderthal site.

They were analyzed by eye and with a light microscope to document occlusal wear, toothpick groove formation, ante mortem enamel, dentin scratches and lingual fractures.

“As a package, this fits together as a dental problem that the Neanderthal was having and was trying to presumably treat itself, with the toothpick grooves, the breaks and also with the scratches on the premolar,” Prof. Frayer said.

“The scratches and grooves on the teeth indicate they were likely causing irritation and discomfort for some time for this individual.”

The paleoanthropologists found the premolar and M3 molar were pushed out of their normal positions.

Associated with that, the team found six toothpick grooves among those two teeth and the two molars further behind them.

“The scratches indicate this individual was pushing something into his or her mouth to get at that twisted premolar,” Prof. Frayer said.

“The features of the premolar and third molar are associated with several kinds of dental manipulations.”

“Mostly because the chips of the teeth were on the tongue side of the teeth and at different angles, we ruled out that something happened to the teeth after the Neanderthal died.”

The authors did not identify what the Neanderthal would have used to produce the toothpick grooves, but it possibly could have been a bone or stem of grass.

“It’s maybe not surprising that a Neanderthal did this, but as far as I know, there’s no specimen that combines all of this together into a pattern that would indicate he or she was trying to presumably self-treat this eruption problem,” Prof. Frayer said.

The evidence from the toothpick marks and dental manipulations is also interesting in light of the discovery of the Krapina Neanderthals’ ability to fashion eagle talons into jewelry, because people often think of Neanderthals as having ‘subhuman’ abilities.

“It fits into a pattern of a Neanderthal being able to modify its personal environment by using tools, because the toothpick grooves, whether they are made by bones or grass stems or who knows what, the scratches and chips in the teeth, they show us that Neanderthals were doing something inside their mouths to treat the dental irritation. Or at least this one was,” Prof. Frayer added.

The research is published in the Bulletin of the International Association for Paleodontology.

[marcus300]

New Herbivorous Dinosaur Species Discovered: Matheronodon provincialis

A new species of rhabdodontid dinosaur, named Matheronodon provincialis, has been discovered in southern France


Matheronodon provincialis was a primitive cousin of the well-known European dinosaur Iguanodon.

The ancient beast lived 70 million years ago (Late Cretaceous epoch) and was approximately 16 feet (5 m) long.

The fossilized jawbone and three teeth of the new species were discovered at the site of Velaux-La Bastide Neuve, Bouches-du-Rhône Department, southern France.

“Matheronodon provincialis had extremely enlarged teeth, up to 2.4 inches (6 cm) long and 2 inches (5 cm) wide. They operated like self-sharpening serrated scissors,” said Dr. Koen Stein, a paleontologist at Free University of Brussels, Belgium.

“Its teeth have ridged surfaces but are only covered with a thick enamel layer on one side.”

“Because the enamel is more resistant to wear than the exposed dentine, chewing actually keeps the teeth sharp.”


“The denture of rhabdodontid dinosaurs (Rhabdodontidae) had evolved in a different direction than that of their contemporaries, the hadrosaurs or duck-billed dinosaurs,” said Dr. Pascal Godefroit, a paleontologist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences.

“Hadrosaurs had sophisticated dental ‘batteries’ formed by little teeth with which they could crush conifers.”

“Matheronodon provincialis and other Rhabdodontidae probably ate leaves of palm trees, which were abundant in Europe at that time.”

“They had to cut rather than crush the fiber-rich leaves, before they could swallow them.”

Research describing the new species is published online in the journal Scientific Reports.

[marcus300]

This is amazing and just blows my mind

Merging Black Hole Binaries Might Lurk in Outskirts of Huge Spiral GalaxiesNov 1, 2017

Chakrabarti et al identify an overlooked region that may prove to be rife with orbiting black holes and the origin of gravitational-wave chirps heard by the two Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors in the United States and the Virgo detector in Italy. This Hubble image shows the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA / P. Knezek, WIYN

Conditions favourable for mergers of massive black holes exist in the outer gas disks of massive spiral galaxies, according to a study led by Rochester Institute of Technology astrophysicist Sukanya Chakrabarti.

Until now, small satellite or dwarf galaxies were thought to have the most suitable environment for hosting black-hole populations: a sparse population of stars, unpolluted with heavy metals like iron, gold and platinum — elements spewed in supernovae explosions — and inefficient winds that leave massive stars intact.

Dr. Chakrabarti and her colleagues realized the edges of galaxies like the Milky Wavy have similar environments to dwarf galaxies but with a major advantage — big galaxies are easier to find.

“The metal content in the outer disks of spiral galaxies is also quite low and should be rife with black holes in this large area,” she explained.

“This study shows that, when predicting or interpreting observations of black holes, we need to account not only for differences between different types of galaxies but also the range of environments that occur inside of them,” added co-author Dr. Richard O’Shaughnessy, assistant professor of mathematical sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology and a member of the LIGO Collaboration.

A deeper understanding of the Universe is possible now that scientists can combine gravitational wave astronomy with traditional measurements of bands of light.

Existing research shows that even black holes, which are too dense for light to escape, have a gravitational wave and an optical counterpart, remnants of matter from the stellar collapse from which they formed.

“If you can see the light from a black-hole merger, you can pinpoint where it is in the sky,” Dr. Chakrabarti said.

“Then you can infer the parameters that drive the life cycle of the Universe as a whole and that’s the holy grail for cosmology.”

“The reason this is important is because gravitational waves give you a completely independent way of doing it so it doesn’t rely on astrophysical approximations.”

Details of the research will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and are publicly available at arXiv.org.

_____

Sukanya Chakrabarti et al. 2017. The Contribution of Outer HI Disks to the Merging Binary Black Hole Population. ApJL, in press; arXiv: 1710.09407

[marcus300]

Awesome pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope

[clarky.]

Awesome pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope

Waw, good thread big chap.

[Sh0tsf1red]

Artist’s rendering of a cross-section of the Great Pyramid showing the newly discovered void (represented as a white area) above the large inclined corridor known as grand gallery.

Cosmic rays reveal unknown void in the Great Pyramid of Giza

Some 4500 years ago, the ancient Egyptians built the Great Pyramid of Giza as a tomb for the pharaoh Khufu, also known as Cheops, one that would ferry him to the afterlife. Now, using subatomic particles raining down from the heavens, a team of physicists has found a previously unknown cavity within Khufu’s great monument.

“Such a big void can’t be an accident,” says Mehdi Tayoubi, president of the non-profit Heritage Innovation Preservation Institute in Paris, who led the research. The discovery has already stirred the interest of archaeologists and particle physicists alike.

Made of an estimated 2.3 million stone blocks and standing 140 meters tall and 230 meters wide, the Great Pyramid is an engineering mystery, much like its two smaller sister pyramids, Khafre’s and Menkaure’s. Archaeologists know that it was built for Khufu, who died in 2566 B.C.E. But they have long wondered exactly how the pyramid was constructed and structured.


Now, archaeologists are getting help from an unlikely source: cosmic rays, subatomic particles that rain down from space. In fact, a team of physicists has found a previously unknown void within the pyramid by imaging it with muons, high-energy byproducts of cosmic rays that are created when protons and other atomic nuclei strike the atmosphere.

Every minute, tens of thousands of muons pass through each square meter of Earth. The particles are much like electrons but 207 times as massive. Because they’re so heavy, the negatively charged particles can travel through hundreds of meters of stone before being absorbed—whereas electrons make it only a few centimeters. So just as doctors use x-rays to look into our bodies, physicists can use muons to peek into thick structures—from volcanoes to disabled nuclear power plants. To do that, all researchers need to do is to place a muon detector, such as tile-sized special photographic films, underneath, within, or near an object and count the number of muons coming through the thing in different directions.

One of the first times scientists used muon imaging was to search for hidden chambers in Khafre’s pyramid at Giza in the late 1960s. None was discovered. This time around, after a 2016 experiment revealed anomalies that could indicate something behind its walls, scientists set out to image Khufu’s pyramid. To do that they placed various direction-sensitive muon detectors in the queen’s chamber and in an adjacent corridor within the pyramid and at its base on the north side, and analyzed the collected data every 2 to 5 months. As proof of principle, they confirmed the presence of three known large cavities: the queen’s and king’s chambers, and a long corridor that connects them, known as the grand gallery.

But, just above the grand gallery the researchers also spotted a new void area, they report today in Nature. The new cavity is nearly 8 meters high, 2 meters wide, and at least 30 meters long—like a cathedral, but much narrower—and it rises 20 meters above the ground in the pyramid’s core.

The scientists have “seen” the void using three different muon detectors in three independent experiments, which makes their finding very robust, says Lee Thompson, an expert in particle physics at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom who was not involved in the work. But the cavity’s detailed structure remains unclear: It might be one or many adjacent compartments, and could be horizontal or slanted.

At this stage, the cavity’s function can only be guessed. Because it is inaccessible, it probably isn’t a burial chamber, says archaeologist Mark Lehner, director of Ancient Egypt Research Associates in Boston, who was not involved in the research. “It’s not the ideal place to contain a body,” he says. It could have purely symbolic meaning, as a passage for the pharaoh’s soul, Tayoubi says.

Zahi Hawass, an Egyptologist based in Cairo who chairs the committee that reviewed the research project, cautions against calling the cavity a “secret room,” as pyramid builders often left large gaps between stone blocks, a construction strategy that makes the pyramid’s core look like Swiss cheese. The void might simply have served to relieve the weight of the stone blocks above the grand gallery to preserve it from collapse, like the five compartments, stacked on top of each other, that protect the king’s chamber in the same pyramid, Lehner says.

To answer questions about the cavity’s structure and function, the researchers hope to do more muon imaging experiments with finer resolution. This means placing more detectors inside and near the pyramid that collect data for longer—up to several years, Tayoubi says. Understanding the detailed structure of the cavity could also help determine how the Great Pyramid was built in the first place, whether using external ramps or internal passages through which stone blocks were carried to the higher levels of the structure.

Until then, the new finding, although “impressive,” doesn’t dramatically change the way we think about pyramids, Lehner says. But other scientists, such as particle physicist Guido Saracino of the University of Naples Federico II in Italy, are thrilled. According to Saracino, this work confirms that particle physics can have important practical applications, including archaeological surveys. And one day it may help scientists figure out how the ancient pyramids were built.


Posted in: Archaeology,
Physics

Saw this the other day, good read. Much to still learn about the power plant/bomb shelter/pyramids our space brothers left behind.

[marcus300]

Very interesting stuff



Study: Iridium-Based Compound Fights Cancer Cells


An international group of scientists has demonstrated that iridium — a very hard, silvery-white transition metal of the platinum group — can be used to kill cancer cells by filling them with deadly version of oxygen, without harming healthy tissue. The study is published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

“The precious metal platinum is already used in more than 50% of cancer chemotherapies,” said lead co-author Professor Peter Sadler, from the University of Warwick, UK.

“The potential of other precious metals such as iridium to provide new targeted drugs which attack cancer cells in completely new ways and combat resistance, and which can be used safely with the minimum of side-effects, is now being explored.”

“Our project is a leap forward in understanding how these new iridium-based anti-cancer compounds are attacking cancer cells, introducing different mechanisms of action, to get around the resistance issue and tackle cancer from a different angle,” said co-author Dr. Cookson Chiu, a postgraduate researcher at the University of Warwick.

“Our innovative approach to tackle cancer involving targeting important cellular proteins can lead to novel drugs with new mechanisms of action. These are urgently needed,” said first author Dr. Pingyu Zhang, from the University of Warwick and Shenzhen University in China.

The researchers created a compound of iridium and organic material, which can be directly targeted towards cancerous cells, transferring energy to the cells to turn the oxygen inside them into singlet oxygen, which is poisonous and kills the cell — without harming any healthy tissue.

The process is triggered by shining visible laser light through the skin onto the cancerous area — this reaches the light-reactive coating of the compound, and activates the metal to start filling the cancer with singlet oxygen.

They found that after attacking a model tumor of lung cancer cells, grown in the lab to form a tumor-like sphere, with red laser light (which can penetrate deeply through the skin), the activated organic-iridium compound had penetrated and infused into every layer of the tumor to kill it — demonstrating how effective and far-reaching this treatment is.

They also proved that the method is safe to healthy cells by conducting the treatment on non-cancerous tissue and finding it had no effect.

Furthermore, the team used state-of-the-art ultra-high resolution mass spectrometry to gain an unprecedented view of the individual proteins within the cancer cells — allowing them to determine precisely which proteins are attacked by the organic-iridium compound.

After vigorously analyzing huge amounts of data — thousands of proteins from the model cancer cells, they concluded that the iridium compound had damaged the proteins for heat shock stress, and glucose metabolism, both known as key molecules in cancer.

“Remarkable advances in modern mass spectrometry now allow us to analyze complex mixtures of proteins in cancer cells and pinpoint drug targets, on instruments that are sensitive enough to weigh even a single electron,” said lead co-author Professor Peter O’Connor, also from the University of Warwick.

_____

Pingyu Zhang et al. Organoiridium Photosensitizers Induce Specific Oxidative Attack on Proteins within Cancer Cells. Angewandte Chemie, published online October 19, 2017; doi: 10.1002/anie.201709082

[marcus300]

Catastrophic Volcanic Eruption Occurred in Pacific Northwest 16.5 Million Years Ago, Geologists Say

The Pacific Northwest, a geographic region in western North America, was home to one of the planet’s most powerful known volcanic eruptions, according to a team of scientists from Washington State University (WSU) and the University of Auckland.

Starting 16.5 million years ago, vents in southeast Washington and northeast Oregon put out a series of flows that reached nearly to Canada and all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

The flows created the Wapshilla Ridge Member of the Grande Ronde Basalt, a kilometer-thick block familiar to travelers in the Columbia Gorge and most of Eastern Washington.

“It is the largest mapped flood basalt unit on Earth,” said WSU Professor John Wolff and co-authors.

The researchers estimate that, over tens of thousands of years, the floods put out between 242 and 305 billion tons of sulfur dioxide.

“This would have been devastating regionally because of the acid-rain effect from the eruption,” Professor Wolff said.

“It did have a global effect on temperatures, but not drastic enough to start killing things, or it did not kill enough of them to affect the fossil record.”

The Wapshilla eruption blanketed the Earth in an aerosol veil, creating the ‘Year Without A Summer’ and food shortages across the northern hemisphere. Only two other eruptions — the basalt floods of the Siberian Traps and the Deccan Traps — were larger, and they led to two of the Earth’s great extinctions.

Davis et al sampled sulfur dioxide trapped in rock near lava vents to gauge how much gas was put in the air by massive basalt flows 16.5 million years ago. The inset map shows the extent of the flows, with the region in the black line showing the Wapshilla Ridge flow that emitted more than 200 billion tons of sulfur dioxide. Image credit: Washington State University.

Most of the lava’s gases were released during the eruption, but some of the gas remained trapped in crystals near the volcanic vents.

“We sampled melt inclusions and host glasses preserved in near-vent phreatomagmatic deposits associated with the voluminous lavas,” the scientists said.

“Sulfur (S) contents of melt inclusions range up to 0.19 wt% S, while host glasses are variably degassed with 0.01-0.13 wt% S. Incomplete degassing of glassy lapilli is attributed to phreatomagmatic quenching in the vent.”

“The magmatic S contents in the very voluminous (40,000 km3) Wapshilla Ridge Member scale up to 242-305 Gt SO2 release to the atmosphere over a maximum time period of 94,000 years.”

The Wapshilla eruption also provides an insight into the workings of climate change.

“It took place in what is known as the Miocene Climatic Optimum (MCO), when some 50 million years of cooling was interrupted by 5 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit of warming,” the authors said.

“But at its peak, the MCO had a brief cooling period that coincides with the Wapshilla eruption and its profusion of sulfur dioxide.”

The research is published in the journal Geology.

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Astronomers Find Two Dust Belts around Proxima Centauri

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have detected dust belts around Proxima Centauri, the star closest to our Sun. Full details of the discovery will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters

This artist’s impression shows how the newly-discovered dust belts around Proxima Centauri may look. This sketch is not to scale — to make Proxima b clearly visible it has been shown further from the star and larger than it is in reality. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO

Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf star only 4.23 light-years away in the constellation Centaurus. It is not visible to the naked eye and lies near to the much brighter pair, Alpha Centauri AB.

The star is known to host at least one exoplanet — the Earth-mass world Proxima b — in a temperate orbit.

But there is more to this system than just a single planet.

The new ALMA observations reveal the glow coming from cold dust in a region between 1 to 4 AU (astronomical units).

This belt has a total mass of about one hundredth of the Earth’s mass is estimated to have a temperature of about minus 230 degrees Celsius (minus 382 degrees Fahrenheit), as cold as that of the Kuiper Belt in the outer Solar System.

“The dust around Proxima Centauri is important because, following the discovery of Proxima b, it’s the first indication of the presence of an elaborate planetary system, and not just a single planet, around the star closest to our Sun,” said lead author Dr. Guillem Anglada, from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain.

“Dust belts are the remains of material that did not form into larger bodies such as planets. The particles of rock and ice in these belts vary in size from the tiniest dust grain, smaller than a millimeter across, up to asteroid-like bodies many kilometers in diameter.”

The ALMA data also hint at the presence of an extremely cold outer belt around Proxima Centauri.

According to the astronomers, the outer belt is approximately 30 AU from the star and has a temperature of about minus 263 degrees Celsius (minus 441 degrees Fahrenheit).

If confirmed, the nature of this belt is intriguing, given its very cold environment far from a star that is cooler and fainter than the Sun.

Both belts are much further from Proxima Centauri than Proxima b, which orbits at just 0.05 AU from the star.

“This result suggests that Proxima Centauri may have a multiple planet system with a rich history of interactions that resulted in the formation of a dust belt,” Dr. Anglada said.

“Further study may also provide information that might point to the locations of as yet unidentified additional planets.”

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Breakthrough Could Lead to More Effective Treatments for Colon Cancer, Other Gut Diseases
Colon cancer, Crohn’s disease, and other gut diseases could be better treated — or even prevented — thanks to a newly-discovered link between a cellular process called autophagy and inflammation. The findings of a research team at the University of Warwick are published in the journal Nature Communications.


Tusco et al find a link between inflammation and a common cellular process called autophagy. Image credit: University of Warwick

Autophagy is an essential process whereby cells break down and recycle harmful or damaged elements within themselves to keep our bodies healthy.

According to the study, this process causes tissue inflammation when dysfunctional, which in turn leaves us susceptible to harmful diseases, particularly in the gut.

Understanding this link could lead to more effective treatments for gut diseases — such as colon cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis — giving healthcare professionals the ability to target the root cause of these diseases, by regulating and controlling autophagy.

In the new study, Dr. Ioannis Nezis from the University of Warwick’s School of Life Sciences and co-authors identified a protein which is regulated by autophagy.

This protein, called Kenny, contains a motif of amino acids that causes itself to be broken down by autophagy.

When autophagy is dysfunctional, Kenny accumulates and causes inflammation.

The team identified this phenomenon in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), by turning Kenny fluorescent — so it would be visible — and observing at a microscopic level that the protein was present in the cell where autophagy was occurring.

The scientists also noted that dysfunctional autophagy causes serious inflammation in fruit flies — particularly in the gut — which makes tissue inflamed, causing disease, and making the lifespan of a fruit fly half that of other flies.

“To prevent serious diseases of the gut caused by inflammation, it is necessary to find ways to control and regulate autophagy,” they said.

“Humans are in even more danger from the link between autophagy, inflammation, and a dysfunctional or diseased gut — because our bodies lack the regular motif of amino acids which Kenny uses in fruit flies, making its breakdown by autophagy difficult to control or regulate.”

“Understanding the molecular mechanisms of selective autophagy and inflammation will help to use interventions to activate the autophagic pathway to prevent inflammation and promote healthy well-being during the life course,” Dr. Nezis said.

“Natural compounds contained in fruits and vegetables like pomegranates, red grapes, pears, mushrooms, lentils, soybeans and green peas have been shown to activate autophagy, therefore inclusion of the above in our diet would help to prevent inflammation and alleviate the symptoms of gut diseases.”

_____
Radu Tusco et al. 2017. Kenny mediates selective autophagic degradation of the IKK complex to control innate immune responses. Nature Communications 8, article number: 1264; doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-01287-9

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Fossil of 'our earliest ancestors' found in Dorset


The mammals ventured out at night to hunt insects

Fossils of the oldest-known ancestors of most living mammals, including human beings, have been unearthed in southern England.

Teeth belonging to the extinct shrew-like creatures, which scampered at the feet of dinosaurs, were discovered in cliffs on the Dorset coast.

Scientists who identified the specimens say they are the earliest undisputed fossils of mammals belonging to the line that led to humans.

They date back 145 million years.

''Here we have discovered from the Jurassic coast a couple of shrew-like things that are to date unequivocally our earliest ancestors,'' said Dr Steve Sweetman of Portsmouth University, who examined the ancient teeth.




The mammals were tiny, furry creatures that probably emerged under the cover of night.

One, a possible burrower, dined on insects, while the larger may have eaten plants as well.

Their teeth were highly advanced, of a type that can pierce, cut and crush food.

''They are also very worn which suggests the animals to which they belonged lived to a good age for their species,'' said Dr Sweetman.

''No mean feat when you're sharing your habitat with predatory dinosaurs."

The fossils were discovered by Grant Smith, then an undergraduate student. He was sifting through rock samples collected at Durlston Bay near Swanage for his dissertation when he found teeth of a type never before seen in rocks of this age.


Researchers from the University of Portsmouth made the discovery

''The Jurassic Coast is always unveiling fresh secrets and I'd like to think that similar discoveries will continue to be made right on our doorstep," said Prof Dave Martill of Portsmouth University, who supervised the project.

One of the new species has been named Durlstotherium newmani after Charlie Newman, who is the landlord of a pub close to where the fossils were discovered, and is also a keen fossil collector.

The second has been named Dulstodon ensomi, after Paul Ensom, a local palaeontologist.

The findings, published in the Journal, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, add new evidence to a hotly-debated field.

Recent fossil discoveries from China pushed back the date of the earliest mammals to 160 million years ago.

However, this has been disputed, based on data from molecular studies.

A separate study revealed this week suggests that the earliest mammals were night creatures that only switched to daytime living after the demise of the dinosaurs.

The research, published in the journal, Nature Ecology and Evolution, could explain why many mammals living today are nocturnal.

[marcus300]

Excitement Builds for the Possibility of Life on Enceladus

Scientists tackle the question of how to search for life on Saturn’s sixth-largest moon


Saturn's icy moon Enceladus is thought to host a liquid ocean beneath its frozen surface that could be hospitable to life. Credit: NASA

Saturn’s frozen moon Enceladus is a tantalizing world—many scientists are increasingly convinced it may be the best place in our solar system to search for life. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, currently orbiting Saturn, has made intriguing observations of icy jets spewing from a suspected underground liquid ocean on the mysterious world that might be hospitable to alien life.

Cassini’s tour is due to wind down in 2017, and scientists badly want to send a dedicated mission to Enceladus to look for signs of life. In fact, some have already started seriously thinking about exactly how they might do this—including planetary scientist Carolyn Porco, who is the imaging team leader for Cassini. Earlier this month, she gathered a group of researchers including oceanographers, organic chemists and astrobiologists at the University of California, Berkeley, to strategize how to search for extraterrestrials on Enceladus—which, according to Porco, “is a total bitch of a problem to solve.”

Although Enceladus is small in size and shrouded in a thick shell of ice, it appears to be a habitable world: It has a source of energy from friction created by its orbit around Saturn, organic compounds that are building blocks for life and a liquid water ocean underneath all that ice. But just because Enceladus may be hospitable to life does not mean life exists there; it will take much more work to definitively prove it. At the Berkeley meeting, scientists laid out the data Cassini has collected for Enceladus—they discussed analyses of its geysers, measurements of its ice shell, ideas on what its ocean chemistry might be like, and more. Yet even with all the newest data and models scientists have, they are not even close to detecting organisms on Enceladus—hence the need for a space mission.

Finding life there would be a profound revelation that we are not alone in the cosmos. Furthermore, the discovery of organisms—or the lack thereof—could answer the subtler mystery of how life started on Earth. Researchers at the meeting presented two major opposing theories about how life here originated (in the ocean versus on land), and the group discussed how exploring Enceladus would inform this debate. “It would be a test of one of the ideas about the origin of life,” Porco says—specifically, the proposition that Earth’s species sprang in the sea. For example, if organisms exist in Enceladus’s ocean and presumably arose there, it would support the theory that life began on Earth in hydrothermal vents (hot, nutrient-rich, deep-sea vents on the ocean floor) rather than in patches of water on land.

Enceladus could also teach us about genesis in our solar system in other critical ways. “You’re not just searching for life, you’re searching for an understanding of the nature of that life, and how it compares to life on Earth,” says Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center. For instance, if we discover that creatures on Enceladus are nothing like those on Earth—if their biochemistry is completely different—then it would likely mean that the two forms of life arose separately and independently, and thus, that aliens might be likely to exist other places as well. “If life started at least twice in our solar system, then you know the universe is full of life,” McKay says. Or, if we find out that Enceladus organisms and Earth organisms are made in identical ways, it may indicate that life originated someplace else, and was carried to both worlds. If Enceladus is barren, however, it could support the theory that life needs an environment on dry land to get started, not an ocean. Regardless of what a mission to Enceladus might discover, the answer will tell us something fascinating.

SKIMMING GEYSERS

Enceladus has over 90 geysers that spew plumes of salty water vapor, organic compounds and ice particles from the underground ocean into the air. These present a great opportunity for a visiting spacecraft, which would not have to land to search for life (which is much more difficult and expensive) but could simply fly through the geysers to capture samples. “The plume is coming right out of the ocean,” McKay explains, “So why would we want to land? We can get the freshest stuff, coming right from the source.”

Yet even if life exists on Enceladus, it may or may not show up in plume samples. If the pelagic ocean on Earth (that is, the open water away from the shore or seafloor) is an analogue for Saturn’s icy ocean moon, then the outlook is depressing—the pelagic zone has an extremely low density of life even on our planet. “If we had this in Enceladus’s ocean, it would be very hard to even pick up an organism,” Porco says. Scientists would need to sample a ridiculously large amount of water in order to capture any organisms.

Thankfully, a few months ago a microbiologist told Porco about decades-old scientific research that makes her optimistic about finding life in the plumes. At the Berkeley meeting, she described this research on a process called “bubble scrubbing” that occurs in Earth’s oceans—and it could make quite a difference in Enceladus’s geysers. It turns out that wherever bubbles rise through water, they scrub the water column so that organisms and organic materials become concentrated at the surface. And when the bubbles burst (like in ocean spray or in Enceladus’s jets), they eject those microbes in the spray. So if life exists on Enceladus, its plumes may contain a much greater concentration of organisms than the rest of its ocean—all thanks to bubbles. “Even if the ocean on Enceladus starts out being as microbially poor as the pelagic ocean on Earth, which is the worst case, we still have a chance of seeing lots of organisms in the plumes,” Porco says. Still, this scenario immediately presents another issue: A spacecraft must find a way to capture a sample without smashing the delicate organisms to bits as it makes a high-speed pass through the jets.


SEEKING SIGNS OF LIFE

Once a spacecraft collects a sample from Enceladus, how will scientists test it for life? The process is more complex than simply searching for something that is alive—after all, researchers have argued over the definition of life for years. In the case of hunting for extraterrestrials scientists must get creative. “If you went to Mars and found a dead rabbit on the ground, it’s not alive, but it is compelling evidence of life,” McKay says. “So we’re not searching for something that’s alive but searching for the molecules that life uses. In other words, we’re looking for the body of the dead rabbit.”

The molecules that McKay and other scientists consider most important are amino acids—the building blocks for proteins. “They occur on comets and meteorites, so if there’s a primordial soup on Enceladus, it should have amino acids,” McKay says. “They’re so incredibly useful and so good in water that life would be pretty dumb not to use them.” At one point in the Berkeley meeting, however, Porco brought up a critical point: What if Enceladus organisms aren’t made of amino acids? McKay replied, jokingly, “Then we’re sunk and nature is perverse. We should all just give up and become poets.” What he meant is there’s a large consensus in the scientific community that amino acids will be useful in the hunt for life—and if such thinking turns out to be wrong, well “then we’re even dumber than we thought we were,” McKay says.

Another important signature scientists want to detect is lipids, which cells use to build their outside walls. “It’s a similar story to amino acids,” explains Alfonso Davila, a research scientist at the SETI Institute and Ames. “They’re something you’d expect to be present at the origin of life and you’d expect cells to use them.” Scientists will need to do more than simply detect amino acids and proteins on Enceladus—both of those molecules exist on their own in many environments, with or without life. But astrobiologists can target distinct structures and distributions of amino acids and lipids they think are unique to life. “We’re looking for molecules and structures that life makes, that are distinctly different from the random mess that chemistry makes,” McKay notes.

Some other possibilities on the search list are large organic compounds as well as photos of actual organisms taken by the spacecraft of samples from the plume. That might be, for example, images of an organism swimming or eating. Such a find might be the most direct evidence of something “alive” but many researchers have doubts about the plausibility of imaging organisms, Davila says. “It’s one of those high-risk, high-reward experiments. The likelihood of a negative result is very high,” he adds. “It’s very hard to tell the difference between a cell and a dot that is just a particle.” This issue was hotly debated at the meeting but some scientists sounded more hopeful—they discussed new techniques they are exploring to reliably image Enceladus’s microbes (if they exist).

Ultimately, scientists think it will probably take a combination of evidence to show that they have actually found life. And, of course, cost and technology will constrain the experiments they are able to perform. The hunt will be incredibly complicated, especially considering that organisms on Enceladus may not look or operate anything like they do on Earth. “We’re walking a thin line between what we know based on Earth life and what we expect life would be like otherwise,” Davila says. “It’s one of the things that prevents us from coming up with a good strategy.”


Or, to reiterate Porco’s observation—“It’s a total bitch of a problem to solve.”

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Scientists find potential 'missing link' in chemistry that led to life on earth

LA JOLLA, Calif. - Nov. 6, 2017 - Chemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found a compound that may have been a crucial factor in the origins of life on Earth.


Origins-of-life researchers have hypothesized that a chemical reaction called phosphorylation may have been crucial for the assembly of three key ingredients in early life forms: short strands of nucleotides to store genetic information, short chains of amino acids (peptides) to do the main work of cells, and lipids to form encapsulating structures such as cell walls. Yet, no one has ever found a phosphorylating agent that was plausibly present on early Earth and could have produced these three classes of molecules side-by-side under the same realistic conditions.

TSRI chemists have now identified just such a compound: diamidophosphate (DAP).

"We suggest a phosphorylation chemistry that could have given rise, all in the same place, to oligonucleotides, oligopeptides, and the cell-like structures to enclose them," said study senior author Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, associate professor of chemistry at TSRI. "That in turn would have allowed other chemistries that were not possible before, potentially leading to the first simple, cell-based living entities."

The study, reported today in Nature Chemistry, is part of an ongoing effort by scientists around the world to find plausible routes for the epic journey from pre-biological chemistry to cell-based biochemistry.

Other researchers have described chemical reactions that might have enabled the phosphorylation of pre-biological molecules on the early Earth. But these scenarios have involved different phosphorylating agents for different types of molecule, as well as different and often uncommon reaction environments.

"It has been hard to imagine how these very different processes could have combined in the same place to yield the first primitive life forms," said Krishnamurthy.

He and his team, including co-first authors Clémentine Gibard, Subhendu Bhowmik, and Megha Karki, all postdoctoral research associates at TSRI, showed first that DAP could phosphorylate each of the four nucleoside building blocks of RNA in water or a paste-like state under a wide range of temperatures and other conditions.

With the addition of the catalyst imidazole, a simple organic compound that was itself plausibly present on the early Earth, DAP's activity also led to the appearance of short, RNA-like chains of these phosphorylated building blocks.

Moreover, DAP with water and imidazole efficiently phosphorylated the lipid building blocks glycerol and fatty acids, leading to the self-assembly of small phospho-lipid capsules called vesicles--primitive versions of cells.

DAP in water at room temperature also phosphorylated the amino acids glycine, aspartic acid and glutamic acid, and then helped link these molecules into short peptide chains (peptides are smaller versions of proteins).

"With DAP and water and these mild conditions, you can get these three important classes of pre-biological molecules to come together and be transformed, creating the opportunity for them to interact together," Krishnamurthy said.

Krishnamurthy and his colleagues have shown previously that DAP can efficiently phosphorylate a variety of simple sugars and thus help construct phosphorus-containing carbohydrates that would have been involved in early life forms. Their new work suggests that DAP could have had a much more central role in the origins of life.

"It reminds me of the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella, who waves a wand and 'poof,' 'poof,' 'poof,' everything simple is transformed into something more complex and interesting," Krishnamurthy said.

DAP's importance in kick-starting life on Earth could be hard to prove several billion years after the fact. Krishnamurthy noted, though, that key aspects of the molecule's chemistry are still found in modern biology.

"DAP phosphorylates via the same phosphorus-nitrogen bond breakage and under the same conditions as protein kinases, which are ubiquitous in present-day life forms," he said. "DAP's phosphorylation chemistry also closely resembles what is seen in the reactions at the heart of every cell's metabolic cycle."

Krishnamurthy now plans to follow these leads, and he has also teamed with early-Earth geochemists to try to identify potential sources of DAP, or similarly acting phosphorus-nitrogen compounds, that were on the planet before life arose.

"There may have been minerals on the early Earth that released such phosphorus-nitrogen compounds under the right conditions," he said. "Astronomers have found evidence for phosphorus-nitrogen compounds in the gas and dust of interstellar space, so it's certainly plausible that such compounds were present on the early Earth and played a role in the emergence of the complex molecules of life."

###

The other co-author of the paper, "Phosphorylation, Oligomerization and Self-assembly in Water Under Potential Prebiotic Conditions," was Eun-Kyong Kim of TSRI.

Support for the research was provided by the Simons Foundation (grant 327124) and NASA (grant NNX14AP59G).

About The Scripps Research Institute

The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) is one of the world's largest independent, not-for-profit organizations focusing on research in the biomedical sciences. TSRI is internationally recognized for its contributions to science and health, including its role in laying the foundation for new treatments for cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia, and other diseases. An institution that evolved from the Scripps Metabolic Clinic founded by philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps in 1924, the institute now employs more than 2,500 people on its campuses in La Jolla, CA, and Jupiter, FL, where its renowned scientists -- including two Nobel laureates and 20 members of the National Academies of Science, Engineering or Medicine--work toward their next discoveries. The institute's graduate program, which awards PhD degrees in biology and chemistry, ranks among the top ten of its kind in the nation. In October 2016, TSRI announced a strategic affiliation with the California Institute for Biomedical Research (Calibr), representing a renewed commitment to the discovery and development of new medicines to address unmet medical needs. For more information, see http://www.​scripps.​edu.

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'Zombie' star survived going supernova


It's the celestial equivalent of a horror film adversary: a star that just wouldn't stay dead.

When most stars go supernova, they die in a single blast, but astronomers have found a star that survived not one, but five separate explosions.

The "zombie" star kept erupting for nearly two years - six times longer than the duration of a typical supernova.

An international team details their results in the academic journal Nature.

"This supernova breaks everything we thought we knew about how they work. It's the biggest puzzle I've encountered in almost a decade of studying stellar explosions," said co-author Iair Arcavi, a postdoctoral fellow at Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) who is based in California.




The mysterious object, iPTF14hls, was picked up in September 2014 by a wide-field camera astronomy survey.

Astronomers identified it as an exploding star in January 2015; everything about the discovery seemed normal at first.

In common types of supernova, a blast at the centre of the star ejects material at high speed into surrounding space. The expansion of this material releases energy, causing the object to shine brightly for up to 100 days (about four months) before it finally fades.

It soon became clear this exploding star wasn't conforming to expectations. For one thing, it didn't fade, but shone brightly for 600 days - nearly two years


What's more, the astronomers found that its brightness varied by as much as 50% on an irregular timescale, as if it was exploding over and over again.

And, rather than cooling down as expected, the object maintained a near-constant temperature of about 5,700C.

Intriguingly, by combing through archived data, scientists discovered an explosion that occurred in 1954 in exactly the same location. This could suggest that the star somehow survived that explosion, only to detonate again in 2014.

The object may be the first known example of a Pulsational Pair Instability Supernova.

"According to this theory, it is possible that this was the result of star so massive and hot that it generated antimatter in its core," said co-author Daniel Kasen, from the University of California, Berkeley.

"That would cause the star to go violently unstable, and undergo repeated bright eruptions over periods of years."

That process could even repeat itself over decades before the star's final explosion and collapse to a black hole.

Kate Maguire, from Queen's University Belfast, who was not involved with the study, told BBC News: "It's a theoretical idea that people have put forward, but this is the first time that an object has been identified that matches this quite well.

"It's quite unusual."

Writing in a news and views article published in Nature, Prof Stan Woosley, from the University of California, Santa Cruz, said that in the Pulsational Pair Instability theory, a massive star may lose about half its mass before the series of violent pulses begins.

Not everything we know about the "zombie" matches this theory, Prof Woosley added. But many uncertainties remain.

"As of now, no detailed model has been published that can explain the observed emission and constant temperature of iPTF14hls, let alone the possible eruption 60 years ago," he wrote.

"For now, the supernova offers astronomers their greatest thrill: something they do not understand."

[RaginCajun]

here is one to add

300,000-year-old skulls that look shockingly like ours could rewrite the human origin story | The Independent

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here is one to add

300,000-year-old skulls that look shockingly like ours could rewrite the human origin story | The Independent

Cool. I was reading about this the other day. Thanks for sharing

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Juno Beams Back Stunning New Photos of Jupiter
NASA’s Juno orbiter captured a series of beautiful images during its ninth flyby of Jupiter on October 24, 2017.

This image of Jupiter’s southern hemisphere was taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on October 24 at 2:11 p.m. EDT (11:11 a.m. PDT). At the time the image was taken, Juno was 20,577 miles (33,115 km) from the tops of the clouds of the planet at a latitude of minus 52.96 degrees. The color-enhanced view captures one of the white ovals in the ‘String of Pearls,’ one of eight massive rotating storms at 40 degrees south latitude on the gas giant. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstaedt / Sean Doran.

Juno launched on August 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and arrived in orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016.

The spacecraft is in a polar orbit around the gas giant, and the majority of each orbit is spent well away from the planet.

But, once every 53 days, its trajectory approaches Jupiter from above its north pole, where it begins a 2-hr transit — from pole to pole — flying north to south.
This image of Jupiter is reconstructed from the JunoCam data taken during Juno’s ninth flyby of the planet. The image is approximately illumination-adjusted, and enhanced by a gamma stretch to the 4th power of radiometric data. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstaedt

During these flybys, Juno is probing beneath the obscuring cloud cover of the planet and studying its auroras to learn more about its origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

On October 24, 2017, the probe successfully made its ninth (eighth science) flyby over Jupiter’s mysterious cloud tops.

This image of Jupiter was taken by Juno on October 24 and then processed by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstaedt and Sean Doran. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstaedt / Sean Doran.

This image of Jupiter was taken by Juno on October 24 and then processed by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstaedt and Sean Doran. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstaedt / Sean Doran.

This image of Jupiter was taken by Juno on October 24 and then processed by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstaedt and Sean Doran. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstaedt / Sean Doran.

“All the science collected during the flyby was carried in Juno’s memory until November 1, when Jupiter came out of solar conjunction,” said Juno project manager Edward Hirst, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“Juno’s science instruments and its JunoCam, a visible-light camera designed to capture remarkable pictures of Jupiter’s poles and cloud tops, were operating, and the new data are now being transmitted to Earth.”

According to NASA, Juno’s next close flyby of the gas giant will occur on December 16, 2017.

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Dinosaur-Era Shark Found In Portugal



The rare frilled shark is considered a “living fossil,” as its makeup has remained unchanged for 80 million years. This summer, researchers found one alive and thriving off the coast of Portugal, adding evidence regarding the resilience of this ancient sea creature.

The shark was discovered off the Algarve coast by researchers who were working on a European Union project in the area, the BBC reported. The aim of the project was to "minimize unwanted catches in commercial fishing," but the team unknowingly unearthed one of the rarest and most ancient animals on the planet.

The frilled shark has remained the same, both inside and out, since the time of the dinosaurs, with scientists dating it back to the Cretaceous Period, a time when the Tyrannosaurus Rex and Triceratops still roamed the planet. The creature is incredibly simply and unevolved, most likely due to the lack of nutrients found in its deep-sea dwellings, a previous Japanese study on the shark suggested. The examination revealed that its diet is 61 percent cephalopods—the same class that squids and octopus belong to.

This deep sea dweller is usually found between 390 and 4,200 feet below the surface, which is why it’s rarely seen and wasn’t even discovered before the 19th century (despite being around long before man).

The shark caught this summer measured around five feet in length, but at their longest can be around six-and-a-half feet, IFL Science reported. The Japanese study on these rare sharks showed that they may also have the longest gestation period of any living creature, 42 months.

While its name may sound unfitting for a beast that swims the deep seas, according to Mental Floss, the frilled shark is named after its gills. Pretty much all other sharks have separate gills, but the frilled shark’s first pair of gills stretch all the way across its throat. In total, the shark has six pairs of gills that have “frilly” edges.

The shark also has a unique mouth shape. Its jaw has more than 300 teeth neatly lined in 25 rows, which, according to professor Margarida Castro of the University of the Algarve, are specifically designed to help it “to trap squid, fish and other sharks in sudden lunges,” The Portugal News reported. It’s lined with spines called dermal denticles, which, combined with the teeth, give the mouth an all around frightening look.

All in all, it’s unlikely you will ever come face-to-face with a living frilled shark, but if you do, it’s safe to stay: Keep as far away as you can, and whatever you do, try to avoid its ferociously awesome jaw.

[marcus300]

FDA approves 'trackable' pill


US regulators have approved the first pill that can be digitally tracked through the body.

The Abilify MyCite aripiprazole tablets - for treating schizophrenia and manic episodes - have an ingestible sensor embedded inside them that records that the medication has been taken.

A patch worn by the patient transmits this information to their smartphone.

The information can also be sent to the prescribing doctor, if the patient consents to this.

Experts hope it could improve medication compliance, although the company that makes the tablets says this has not been proved for their product.

The prescribing notes also stress that Abilify MyCite should not be used to track drug ingestion in "real-time" or during an emergency, because detection may be delayed or may not occur.

Stomach fluid

The pills are not licensed to be used in elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis.

About the size of a grain of sand, the sensor activates when it comes into contact with stomach fluid.

It can take 30 minutes to two hours to detect ingestion of the tablet.

Mitchell Mathis, from the Food and Drug Administration, said: "Being able to track ingestion of medications prescribed for mental illness may be useful for some patients.

"The FDA supports the development and use of new technology in prescription drugs and is committed to working with companies to understand how technology might benefit patients and prescribers." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-41980836

[Hazard]

I'm going to have a blast with this thread tomorrow. I have a boring 15 hour work day...... see you tmrw

[marcus300]

NASA’s Curiosity Rover Finds Mineral Hematite on Mars
NASA’s Curiosity rover has found spectral evidence of an iron-oxide mineral called hematite (Fe2O3) on a rock near Mount Sharp in Gale Crater, Mars.
This false-color image demonstrates how use of special filters available on Curiosity’s Mastcam camera can reveal the presence of certain minerals in target rocks. It is a composite of images taken through three ‘science’ filters chosen for making hematite stand out as exaggerated purple. Mastcam’s narrow-band filters used for this view help to increase spectral contrast, making blues bluer and reds redder, particularly with the processing used to boost contrast in each of the component images of this composite. Fine-grained hematite preferentially absorbs sunlight around in the green portion of the spectrum around 527 nm. That gives it the purple look from a combination of red and blue light reflected by the hematite and reaching the camera through the other two filters. Bright lines within the rocks are fractures filled with calcium sulfate minerals. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

an area on Mars’ ‘Vera Rubin Ridge’ where the Curiosity team sought to determine whether dust coatings are hiding rocks’ hematite content, the rover found a promising target — a rock called ‘Christmas Cove.’

On September 16, 2017, during the 1,118th Martian day of Curiosity’s work on the planet, the rover’s wire-bristled brush — the Dust Removal Tool — brushed an area about 2.5 inches (6 cm) across.

Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) took an image of the freshly brushed area later the same day.

“Removing dust from part of the Christmas Cove target was part of an experiment to check whether dust is subduing the apparent indications of hematite in some of the area’s bedrock,” the rover-team researchers explained.

“The brushed area’s purplish tint in an image from the MAHLI was characteristic of fine-grained hematite, an iron-oxide mineral that can provide information about ancient environmental conditions.”

“Brushing of this target also exposed details in the fine layering and bright veins within the bedrock of this part of Vera Rubin Ridge.”

Curiosity’s ChemCam instrument examined an area on the Christmas Cove and found spectral evidence of hematite. The upper-left inset of this graphic is an image from ChemCam’s Remote Micro-Imager with five labeled points that the instrument analyzed. The image covers an area about 2 inches (5 cm) wide, and the bright lines are fractures in the rock filled with calcium sulfate minerals. The five charted lines of the graphic correspond to those five points and show the spectrometer measurements of brightness at thousands of different wavelengths, from 400 nm (at the violet end of the visible-light spectrum) to 840 nm (in near-infrared). Sections of the spectrum measurements that are helpful for identifying hematite are annotated. These include a dip around 535 nm, the green-light portion of the spectrum at which fine-grained hematite tends to absorb more light and reflect less compared to other parts of the spectrum. The spectra also show maximum reflectance values near 750 nm, followed by a steep decrease in the spectral slope toward 840 nm, both of which are consistent with hematite. Image credit: CNRS

The next day — September 17, 2017 — observations with the rover’s Mast Camera (Mastcam) and its Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) confirmed a strong presence of hematite.

“ChemCam sometimes zaps rocks with a laser, but can also be used, as in this case, in a ‘passive’ mode,” the scientists said.

“In this type of investigation, the instrument’s telescope delivers to spectrometers the sunlight reflected from a small target point.”
Planetary Science
Space Exploration

This image of Jupiter’s southern hemisphere was taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on October 24 at 2:11 p.m. EDT (11:11 a.m. PDT). At the time the image was taken, Juno was 20,577 miles (33,115 km) from the tops of the clouds of the planet at a latitude of minus 52.96 degrees. The color-enhanced view captures one of the white ovals in the ‘String of Pearls,’ one of eight massive rotating storms at 40 degrees south latitude on the gas giant. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstaedt / Sean Doran.
Juno Beams Back Stunning New Photos of Jupiter


This graphic illustrates how water might be heated inside Enceladus. Over time, cool ocean water seeps into the moon’s porous core. Pockets of water reaching deep into the interior are warmed by contact with rock in the tidally heated interior and subsequently rise owing to the positive buoyancy, leading to further interaction with the rocks. The heat deposited at the boundary between the seafloor and ocean powers hydrothermal vents. Heat and rocky particles are transported through the ocean, triggering localized melting in the icy shell above. This leads to the formation of fissures, from which jets of water vapor and the rocky particles from the seafloor are ejected into space. In the graphic, the interior ‘slice’ is an excerpt from a new model that simulated this process. The orange glow represents the parts of the core where temperatures reach at least 194 degrees Fahrenheit. Tidal heating owing to the friction arising between particles in the porous core provides a key source of energy, but is not illustrated in this graphic. The tidal heating results primarily from the gravitational pull from Saturn. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute / LPG-CNRS / University of Nantes / University of Angers / ESA.
Enceladus’ Highly Porous Core Keeps Its Subsurface Ocean Warm, New Study Says


This illustration depicts Juno soaring over the south pole of Jupiter. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
NASA’s Juno Orbiter Completes Ninth Jupiter Flyby


This artist’s concept depicts NASA’s Mars 2020 rover on the surface of the Red Planet. The mission takes the next step by not only seeking signs of habitable conditions on Mars in the ancient past, but also searching for signs of past microbial life itself. The rover introduces a drill that can collect core samples of the most promising rocks and soils and set them aside on the surface of Mars. A future mission could potentially return these samples to Earth. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
NASA’s Mars 2020 Rover Will Have 23 Cameras


Artist’s impression of a comet. Image credit: DLR / CC-BY 3.0.
Cometary Ice and Organics are Mostly Older than Our Solar System, Rosetta Scientists Say


This false-color image shows the dwarf planet Ceres. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA.
Ceres Once Had Global Ocean, Studies Suggest


Itokawa’s curious, varied terrain and lack of impact craters indicate it is a rubble pile asteroid. Image credit: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
Asteroid Itokawa Had Violent Past, Planetary Researchers Say

NASA?s Curiosity Rover Finds Mineral Hematite on Mars | Planetary Science, Space Exploration | Sci-News.com

[Hazard]

Newly discovered nearby planet could support life - CNN

[marcus300]

Newly discovered nearby planet could support life - CNN

I was reading about this morning. Interesting stuff

[RaginCajun]

https://apnews.com/4ae98919b52e43d8a...ng-in-the-body

this is really interesting!!!!

[RaginCajun]

I was reading about this morning. Interesting stuff

same here, NERDS!

haha!

[Hazard]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn...ova/index.html

This one is about a supernova that keeps exploding. It's making hem question whether or not this is something completely new.

[marcus300]

same here, NERDS!

haha!

You know what they say

[marcus300]

The trackway of a plant-eating sauropod dinosaur has been excavated in the Jura Mountains, France. This 508-foot (155 m) line of footsteps is the longest known trackway of a sauropod

World’s Longest Sauropod Trackway Found in France

The 110-step trackway represents a new ichnospecies, Brontopodus plagnensis, and extends over 508 feet — a world record for sauropods, which were the largest of the dinosaurs. Image credit: P. Dumas.

The dinosaur tracksite is located less a mile (1 km) west of the village of Plagne in the Department of the Ain, southern French Jura Mountains.

It was discovered by members of the ‘Société des Naturalistes d’Oyonnax,’ a group of amateur geologists specializing in the Jurassic, in 2009.

Paleontologists from the Paléoenvironnements et Paléobiosphère research unit at the Claude Bernard Lyon 1 University then confirmed that the Plagne trackway extends over 508 feet in length, which makes this specimen the longest sauropod trackway currently known in the world, a few feet longer than the Middle Jurassic sauropod trackways from Galinha, Portugal.

The trackway is composed of 110 successive paces, and is generally well-preserved. The prints measure between 3.3 and 10 feet (1-3 m) in diameter.

The footprints reveal five elliptical toe marks, while the handprints are characterized by five circular finger marks arranged in an arc.

They were made by a sauropod, or long-necked dinosaur, approximately 150 million years ago, during the Tithonian, the latest age of the Late Jurassic epoch.

“Paleogeographic reconstructions of Western Europe for this stage indicate an archipelago landscape, where the emergent islands were occasionally connected during periods of relatively low sea level, which presumably allowed faunal expansion or migration,” the researchers said.


Artist’s impression of the Plagne sauropod dinosaur superimposed on its tracks. Image credit: A. Bénéteau / Dinojura

Biometric analysis suggests the Plagne sauropod dinosaur was at least 115 feet (35 m) long, weighted between 35 and 40 tons, had an average stride of 9.2 feet (2.8 m), and traveled at a speed of 2.5 mph (4 km/h).

“This new trackway site, alongside other Early Jurassic Swiss and French tracksites yielding thousands of sauropod and theropod tracks, can be considered as being the largest dinosaur megatracksite in Europe,” the paleontologists said.

They detailed their findings in the August 2017 issue of the journal Geobios.

Jean-Michel Mazin et al. The dinosaur tracksite of Plagne (early Tithonian, Late Jurassic; Jura Mountains, France): The longest known sauropod trackway. Geobios 50 (4): 279-301; doi: 10.1016/j.geobios.2017.06.004

[marcus300]

Galapagos finches caught in act of becoming new species

This is an image of the Big Bird lineage, which arose through the breeding of two distinct parent species: G. fortis and G. conirostris

population of finches on the Galapagos has been discovered in the process of becoming a new species.

This is the first example of speciation that scientists have been able to observe directly in the field.

Researchers followed the entire population of finches on a tiny Galapagos island called Daphne Major, for many years, and so they were able to watch the speciation in progress.

The research was published in the journal Science.

The group of finch species to which the Big Bird population belongs are collectively known as Darwin's finches and helped Charles Darwin to uncover the process of evolution by natural selection.




In 1981, the researchers noticed the arrival of a male of a non-native species, the large cactus finch.

Professors Rosemary and Peter Grant noticed that this male proceeded to mate with a female of one of the local species, a medium ground finch, producing fertile young.

Almost 40 years later, the progeny of that original mating are still being observed, and number around 30 individuals.

"It's an extreme case of something we're coming to realise more generally over the years. Evolution in general can happen very quickly," said Prof Roger Butlin, a speciation expert who wasn't involved in the study.

What makes a species?

This new finch population is sufficiently different in form and habits to the native birds, as to be marked out as a new species, and individuals from the different populations don't interbreed.

Prof Butlin told the BBC that people working on speciation credit the Grant professors with altering our understanding of rapid evolutionary change in the field.

In the past, it was thought that two different species must be unable to produce fertile offspring in order to be defined as such. But in more recent years, it has been established that many birds and other animals that we consider to be unique species are in fact able to interbreed with others to produce fertile young.

"We tend not to argue about what defines a species anymore, because that doesn't get you anywhere," said Prof Butlin. What he says is more interesting is understanding the role that hybridisation can have in the process of creating new species, which is why this observation of Galapagos finches is so important.

The researchers think that the original male must have flown 65 miles from the large cactus finches' home island of Española. That's a very long way for a small finch to fly, and so it would be very unlikely for the bird to make a successful return flight.


A member of the G. fortis species, one of two that interbred to give rise to the Big Bird lineage


A finch belonging to the G. conirostris species. It's the other half of the pairing that gave rise to the Big Bird population

By identifying one way that new species can arise, and following the entire population, the researchers state this as an example of speciation occurring in a timescale we can observe.

In most cases, the offspring of cross-species matings are poorly adapted to their environment. But in this instance, the new finches on Daphne Major are larger than other species on the island, and have taken hold of new and unexploited food.

For this reason, the researchers are calling the animals the "Big Bird population".

To scientifically test whether the Big Bird population was genetically distinct from the three species of finch native to the island, Peter and Rosemary Grant collaborated with Prof Leif Andersson of Sweden's Uppsala University who analysed the population genetically for the new study.

Prof Andersson told BBC News: "The surprise was that we would expect the hybrid would start to breed with one of the other species on the island and be absorbed… we have confirmed that they are a closed breeding group."

Due to an inability to recognise the songs of the new males, native females won't pair with this new species.

The finches led Darwin to his theory of natural selection, as outlined in On The Origin of Species

And in this paper, new genetic evidence shows that after two generations, there was complete reproductive isolation from the native birds. As a result, they are now reproductively - and genetically - isolated. So they have been breeding exclusively with each other over the years.

"What we are saying is that this group of birds behave as a distinct species. If you didn't know anything about [Daphne Major's] history and a taxonomist arrived on this island they would say there are four species on this island," said Prof Andersson.

There is no evidence that they will breed again with the native medium ground finch, but even if they did, they now have a larger size and can exploit new opportunities. Those advantageous traits may be maintained by natural selection.

So hybridisation can lead to speciation, simply through the addition of one individual to a population. It may therefore be a way for new traits to evolve quickly.

"If you just wait for mutations causing one change at a time, then it would make it more difficult to raise a new species that way. But hybridisation may be more effective than mutation," said Prof Butlin.
Galapagos finches caught in act of becoming new species - BBC News

[marcus300]

Double Supermassive Black Hole ‘Photobombs’ Andromeda Galaxy


Using X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical data from ground-based telescopes, astronomers have spotted what could be the most tightly coupled pair of supermassive black holes ever seen.



-ray source LGGS J004527.30+413254.3. Image credit: NASA / CXC / University of Washington / T. Dorn-Wallenstein et al / ESA / J. Dalcanton et al / R. Gendler.

Until recently, astronomers thought this source, known as LGGS J004527.30+413254.3 (J0045+41 for short), was an object within the Andromeda Galaxy, which is approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth.

The new data, however, revealed that J0045+41 was actually at a much greater distance, around 2.6 billion light-years from Earth.

“We were looking for a special type of star in the Andromeda Galaxy and thought we had found one. We were surprised and excited to find something far stranger,” said Dr. Trevor Dorn-Wallenstein, from the University of Washington.

The estimated total mass for two giant black holes in J0045+41 is about 200 million solar masses.

They orbit each other with a separation of only a few hundred times the distance between the Earth and the Sun — this corresponds to less than 1/100 of a light-year.

Such a system could be formed as a consequence of the merger, billions of years earlier, of two galaxies that each contained a supermassive black hole.

At their current close separation, the two black holes are inevitably being drawn closer together as they emit gravitational waves.

“We’re unable to pinpoint exactly how much mass each of these black holes contains. Depending on that, we think this pair will collide and merge into one black hole in as little as 350 years or as much as 360,000 years,” said Dr. John Ruan, also of the University of Washington.

Previously, a different research team had seen periodic variations in the optical light from this source, and, believing it to be a member of the Andromeda Galaxy, classified it as a pair of stars that orbited around each other about once every 80 days.

The intensity of the X-ray source observed by Chandra revealed this original classification was incorrect.

Rather, J0045+41 had to be either a binary system in the Andromeda Galaxy containing a neutron star or black hole that is pulling material from a companion or a much more massive and distant system that contains at least one rapidly growing supermassive black hole.

However, a spectrum from the Gemini-North telescope in Hawaii taken by Dr. Dorn-Wallenstein and colleagues showed that J0045+41 must host at least one supermassive black hole and allowed the team to estimate the distance.

The spectrum also provided possible evidence that a second black hole was present in J0045+41 and moving at a different velocity from the first, as expected if the two black holes are orbiting each other.

The astronomers then used optical data from Caltech’s Palomar Transient Factory to search for periodic variations in the light from J0045+41.

They found several periods in J0045+41, including ones at about 80 and 320 days. The ratio between these periods matches that predicted by theoretical work on the dynamics of two giant black holes orbiting each other.

“This is the first time such strong evidence has been found for a pair of orbiting giant black holes,” said Dr. Emily Levesque, also from the University of Washington.

A paper describing the discovery will appear in the Astrophysical Journal and is now available online at arXiv.org.

_____

Trevor Dorn-Wallenstein et al. 2017. A Mote in Andromeda’s Disk: a Misidentified Periodic AGN behind M31. ApJ, in press; arXiv: 1704.08694

[NACH3]

wow interesting stuff

like

[clarky.]

Some good reading there big man.

[ghettoboyd]

your science thread is blowing my mind marcus...love it...