Science Megathread

[Frodo]

Ecologically-friendly air-conditioning.  Quite timely, too:

New Cooling System Reduces Temperatures In Crowded City Buildings Without Electricity

[Frodo]

Allow me to introduce the parrot from hell, the kind that stood 3 feet tall and was a cannibal:

This toddler-size parrot was a prehistoric oddity
The flightless 'squawkzilla' stood three feet tall and was twice the weight of the kakapo, the heaviest parrot alive today.

[DINGO Joe]

Allow me to introduce the parrot from hell, the kind that stood 3 feet tall and was a cannibal:

This toddler-size parrot was a prehistoric oddity
The flightless 'squawkzilla' stood three feet tall and was twice the weight of the kakapo, the heaviest parrot alive today.

You beat me to it.  His scientific name is pretty awesome--Heracles inexpectatus

Can't wait for the Syfy channel movie.

[Frodo]

And while we are on the subject of giant, flightless, prehistoric birds, here is yet another:

This monster penguin was as big as humans. And it once swam the oceans, scientists say

[Frodo]

It is now raining plastics....literally:

Scientists make troubling discovery in rain falling over portion of US

Plastic has become more than just a part of humans' daily lives; it’s now a part of the environment. Scientists in two very different places have made similar, startling observations in precipitation that demonstrate how plastic is finding its way into every facet of life on the planet.

In the Rocky Mountains, United States Geological Survey (USGS) scientists took samples of rainwater and accidentally found particles of microplastics. They originally had set out to analyze the samples to study rainwater for nitrogen pollution levels. Instead, they found something much more tragic.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), microplastics are pieces of plastic debris that are less than 5 millimeters in length. NOAA explains that microplastics, microbeads and microfibers pose a dangerous threat to aquatic life.

If these particles are ingested or marine wildlife get entangled in them, the plastics can cause injury, alter behaviors and drastically impact important populations. This could throw the balance of the entire ecosystem off kilter.

Does anyone think this is a bigger crisis than human-induced climate change?  Should it be given priority in terms of government resources? 

[dead0man]

It is now raining plastics....literally:

Scientists make troubling discovery in rain falling over portion of US

Plastic has become more than just a part of humans' daily lives; it’s now a part of the environment. Scientists in two very different places have made similar, startling observations in precipitation that demonstrate how plastic is finding its way into every facet of life on the planet.

In the Rocky Mountains, United States Geological Survey (USGS) scientists took samples of rainwater and accidentally found particles of microplastics. They originally had set out to analyze the samples to study rainwater for nitrogen pollution levels. Instead, they found something much more tragic.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), microplastics are pieces of plastic debris that are less than 5 millimeters in length. NOAA explains that microplastics, microbeads and microfibers pose a dangerous threat to aquatic life.

If these particles are ingested or marine wildlife get entangled in them, the plastics can cause injury, alter behaviors and drastically impact important populations. This could throw the balance of the entire ecosystem off kilter.

Does anyone think this is a bigger crisis than human-induced climate change?  Should it be given priority in terms of government resources? 

there isn't much our govt can do here at home, there needs to be better waste management in the third world and better practices by those fishing in the oceans.

[Frodo]

16,000 year-old artifacts found near an Idaho river suggest that humans not only lived in the Americas before the opening of the ice-free corridor, but that they arrived by water along the Pacific coast.  Thereby driving one more stake into the heart of the Clovis-first theory, which should by all rights ought to be stone-cold dead by now:

16,000-Year-Old Stone Artifacts Unearthed in Idaho

[I Can Now Die Happy]

Does anyone else here plan to win a Nobel Prize at least once in their lifetime?

[Frodo]

There are planets out there beyond our solar system that may not only harbor conditions conducive to life, but that may be even more conducive than our own planet:

Study shows some exoplanets may have greater variety of life than exists on Earth

[Blue3]

Strange life forms found deep in a mine point to vast 'underground Galapagos'
The rock-eating, sulfur-breathing microbes have scientists wondering what other strange creatures dwell deep below Earth's surface.

Something odd is stirring in the depths of Canada's Kidd Mine. The zinc and copper mine, 350 miles northwest of Toronto, is the deepest spot ever explored on land and the reservoir of the oldest known water. And yet 7,900 feet below the surface, in perpetual darkness and in waters that have remained undisturbed for up to two billion years, the mine is teeming with life.

Many scientists had doubted that anything could live under such extreme conditions. But in July, a team led by University of Toronto geologist Barbara Sherwood Lollar reported that the mine’s dark, deep water harbors a population of remarkable microbes.

The single-celled organisms don’t need oxygen because they breathe sulfur compounds. Nor do they need sunlight. Instead, they live off chemicals in the surrounding rock — in particular, the glittery mineral pyrite, commonly known as fool’s gold.

“It's a fascinating system where the organisms are literally eating fool's gold to survive,” Sherwood Lollar said. “What we are finding is so exciting — like ‘being a kid again’ level exciting.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/strange-life-forms-found-deep-mine-point-vast-underground-galapagos-ncna1050906

[Frodo]

NASA'S Hubble Finds Water Vapor On Habitable-Zone Exoplanet For the First Time

[Frodo]

Highly Energetic Explosion Occurred in Milky Way’s Center 3.5 Million Years Ago

About 3.5 million years ago, a Seyfert flare from Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, created two enormous ionization cones that sliced through our Galaxy, beginning with a relatively small diameter close to the black hole, and expanding vastly as they exited the Galaxy.

[dead0man]

Saturn passes Jupiter for most moons in the solar system.

reuters

Saturn is now being recognized as the “moon king” of our solar system, with astronomers spotting 20 more of them orbiting the giant ringed planet, bringing its total count to 82 - three more than Jupiter.

The newly identified small moons, ranging from about 2 to 4 miles (3 to 6 km) in diameter, were detected using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii by a research team led by astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington.

“Saturn is the moon king,” Sheppard said on Wednesday in an email interview.

The discovery was announced this week by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center.

One of the moons orbits at an astounding distance of about 15 million miles (24 million km) from Saturn, farther away than any of its other moons. By comparison, Earth’s moon orbits about 240,000 miles (386,000 km) from the planet.

update your Trivia Pursuit cards!

[Frodo]

MIT engineers develop a new way to remove carbon dioxide from air
The process could work on the gas at any concentrations, from power plant emissions to open air.

A new way of removing carbon dioxide from a stream of air could provide a significant tool in the battle against climate change. The new system can work on the gas at virtually any concentration level, even down to the roughly 400 parts per million currently found in the atmosphere.

Most methods of removing carbon dioxide from a stream of gas require higher concentrations, such as those found in the flue emissions from fossil fuel-based power plants. A few variations have been developed that can work with the low concentrations found in air, but the new method is significantly less energy-intensive and expensive, the researchers say.

The technique, based on passing air through a stack of charged electrochemical plates, is described in a new paper in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, by MIT postdoc Sahag Voskian, who developed the work during his PhD, and T. Alan Hatton, the Ralph Landau Professor of Chemical Engineering.

[Frodo]

It seems Botswana is the motherland of modern humans, according to this latest study:

Controversial new study pinpoints where all modern humans arose
The research reignites a long-simmering debate about how and where our species emerged.

(...) Now, a controversial new study in Nature argues that this oasis, known as the Makgadikgadi–Okavango wetland, was not just any home, but the ancestral “homeland” for all modern humans today. The researchers studied mitochondrial DNA—genetic material stored in the powerhouse of our cells that is passed from mother to child—of current residents across southern Africa. Then they layered the genetic data with an analysis of past climate and modern linguistics, as well as cultural and geographic distributions of local populations.

The study’s results suggest that shifts in climate allowed branches of the ancient population to spread from the wetland to newly formed zones of green. Thousands of years later, a small population of these wanderers’ kin eventually would leave Africa and ultimately inhabit every corner of the world.

“We all came from the same homeland in southern Africa,” says Vanessa Hayes of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Australia, who led the new research.

[Frodo]

This newly discovered trove of fossils found in Colorado fills a crucial gap in our understanding of how life recovered in the one million-year period immediately after the extinction of the dinosaurs, leading to the subsequent rise of mammals, eventually including us:

Extraordinary fossils show how mammals rose from the dinosaurs’ ashes

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2221128-extraordinary-fossils-show-how-mammals-rose-from-the-dinosaurs-ashes/#ixzz63zSprtwM

[dead0man]

PBS has a show on that in their loop right now.  Good stuff.

[Frodo]

Apparently the distant ancestors of native Americans were clever and wily enough to use traps to hunt and kill mammoths:

Two Traps Where Woolly Mammoths Were Driven to Their Deaths Found in Mexico
The discovery may offer rare evidence that humans were actively hunting the great creatures

[Frodo]

Scientists extract hydrogen gas from oil and bitumen, giving potential pollution-free energy

Scientists have developed a large-scale economical method to extract hydrogen (H2) from oil sands (natural bitumen) and oil fields. This can be used to power hydrogen-powered vehicles, which are already marketed in some countries, as well as to generate electricity; hydrogen is regarded as an efficient transport fuel, similar to petrol and diesel, but with no pollution problems. The process can extract hydrogen from existing oil sands reservoirs, with huge existing supplies found in Canada and Venezuela. Interestingly, this process can be applied to mainstream oil fields, causing them to produce hydrogen instead of oil.

[President Johnson]

Very interesting, just like all these exoplanets discovered in recent years, opening up the possibility for some form of life out there.

Water vapor detected on Jupiter's moon Europa, adding intrigue to potential for life

For the first time, scientists have discovered the presence of water vapor above the surface on Europa, Jupiter's icy moon first visited by one of the Voyager probes 40 years ago.
This adds to the intrigue of other previously discovered factors associated with the potential for life on Europa. The findings were published in the journal Nature Astronomy on Monday.
The research team observed Europa using the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii -- one of the biggest telescopes in the world -- for 17 nights between 2016 and 2017. On one of those nights, they detected the signal for water vapor.

The researchers observed 5,202 pounds of water releasing from Europa per second, which could fill an Olympic-size swimming pool within minutes, according to NASA.

[...]

Full CNN Article

[Lourdes]

HIV vaccine in 2021? Leading experts 'optimistic' about ongoing trials

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/hiv-vaccine-2021-leading-experts-optimistic-about-ongoing-trials-n1092021

[PSOL]

Climate models have accurately predicted global heating, study finds

...

The findings confirm that since as early as 1970, climate scientists have had a solid fundamental understanding of the Earth’s climate system and the ability to project how it will respond to continued increases in the greenhouse effect. Since climate models have accurately anticipated global temperature changes so far, we can expect projections of future warming to be reliable as well.

The research examines the accuracy of 17 models published over the past five decades, beginning with a 1970 study and including 1981 and 1988 models led by James Hansen, the former Nasa climatologist who testified to the US Senate in 1988 about the impacts of anthropogenic global heating. The study also includes the first four reports by the UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC).

“We found that climate models – even those published back in the 1970s – did remarkably well, with 14 out of the 17 model projections indistinguishable from what actually occurred,” said Zeke Hausfather, of the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of the paper.

[DINGO Joe]

The story of a 1,700 year old sock found in Egypt.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews-history-archaeology/1700-year-old-sock-spins-yarn-about-ancient-egyptian-fashion-180970501/

Nice sock.  Note they only found one though.

[Strudelcutie4427]

The story of a 1,700 year old sock found in Egypt.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews-history-archaeology/1700-year-old-sock-spins-yarn-about-ancient-egyptian-fashion-180970501/

Nice sock.  Note they only found one though.

Confirmation that Dobby was Cleopatras House elf

[Frodo]

The remains of a forest from the Devonian period have been found in a quarry in the Catskills in upstate New York, making it the oldest forest on earth:

World’s Oldest Forest Reveals Modern Trees Emerged Earlier Than Thought

A research team of faculty from Binghamton University in New York revealed surprising evidence Thursday that the transition to the everyday forests we know today began much earlier than previously thought.

Researchers have uncovered an extensive root system while sifting through fossil soils in the Catskill region near Cairo, New York. The roots belonged to 385-million-year old trees that existed during the Devonian Period, an interval of the Paleozoic era. These incredibly well-preserved root systems show evidence of the presence of trees with leaves and wood at the peak of their growth – a fascinating feat considering both features are common in modern seed plants, which did not exist until roughly 10 million years later.

The findings, which will be published this week in the journal Current Biology, is the first piece of evidence discovered to hold evidence that the transition toward modern forests began earlier than previously thought.