Science Megathread

[Frodo]

Radio telescope will launch to moon's far side in 2025 to hunt for the cosmic Dark Ages
The radio astronomy experiment LuSEE-Night will test technologies for radio telescopes on the far side of the moon.

A small mission to test technology to detect radio waves from the cosmic Dark Ages over 13.4 billion years ago will blast off for the far side of the moon in 2025.

The Lunar Surface Electromagnetic Experiment-Night mission, or LuSEE-Night for short, is a small radio telescope being funded by NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy with involvement from scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Brookhaven National Laboratory, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Minnesota. LuSEE-Night will blast off as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payloads program.

The Dark Ages are the evocative name given to the period of time after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies were only just beginning to form and ionize the neutral hydrogen gas that filled the universe. Little is known about this period, despite efforts by the James Webb Space Telescope to begin probing into this era.

[Frodo]

The Xuntian space telescope hasn't even been launched into orbit yet, and already the Chinese are claiming bragging rights over it:

Chinese astronomers say their new space telescope will outdo Hubble

[Frodo]

There was a PBS program (NOVA, I think) that focused on the discovery of these prehistoric footprints in the White Sands area of New Mexico.  I had no idea how much dating evidence could be found in them though, until I read this article:

Ancient footprints upend timeline of humans’ arrival in North America
New evidence adds to work showing people made these prints sometime between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago


Footprints found at White Sands National Park in New Mexico. (National Park Service)

Dozens of awe-inspiring ancient footprints left on the shores of an ice age lake have reignited a long-running debate about when the first people arrived in the Americas.

Two years ago, a team of scientists came to the conclusion that human tracks sunk into the mud in White Sands National Park in New Mexico were more than 21,000 years old. The provocative finding threatened the dominant thinking on when and how people migrated into the Americas. Soon afterward, a technical debate erupted about the method used to estimate the age of the tracks, which relied on an analysis of plant seeds embedded with the footprints.

Now, a study published in the journal Science confirms the initial finding with two new lines of evidence: thousands of grains of pollen and an analysis of quartz crystals in the sediments.

“It’s more or less a master class in how you do this,” said Edward Jolie, an anthropological archaeologist at the University of Arizona who has studied the White Sands footprints in the field but was not involved in the new study. “As Carl Sagan said, ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’ They have some extraordinary evidence.”

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And for those without a Washington Post subscription.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

It's more and more evident that blks were the first humans not Adam and Eve, be ause the Chump have 48 and we have 46 and with dwarfism the chromosomes break as well. Two blk peas can get an albino pea but not two white peas can get a blk pea, Darwinism

That's why whites look like Popeye the sailor because both of us do have dwarfism, but since whites are the last stage of development especially Celts outside of Hebrew, they call themselves Irish Celts

[Frodo]

A NASA Spacecraft Comes Home With an Asteroid Gift for Earth
The seven-year OSIRIS-REX mission ended on Sunday with the return of regolith from the asteroid Bennu, which might hold clues about the origins of our solar system and life.

A brown-and-white capsule that spent the last seven years swooping through the solar system — and sojourning at an asteroid — has finally come home. And it has brought a cosmic souvenir: a cache of space rock that scientists are hungry to get their hands on.

On Sunday morning, those scientists waited eagerly as the pod shot through Earth’s atmosphere at thousands of miles per hour. It gently parachuted down into the muddy landscape of the Utah Test and Training Range, about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City, at 8:52 a.m. local time.

The capsule’s landing is a major win for a NASA mission called OSIRIS-REX, which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resources Identification and Security-Regolith Explorer. The spacecraft set out in 2016 to retrieve material from Bennu, a carbon-rich asteroid about 190 feet wider than the height of the Empire State Building. Researchers hope this pristine space dirt will reveal clues about the birth of our solar system and the genesis of life on Earth.

“This is a gift to the world,” said Dante Lauretta, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona and the principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REX mission, at a news conference last month.

They aren't much to look at for a casual observer (so I didn't bother posting a pic), but for a scientist this is the equivalent of gold (or mithril):

NASA shows off its first asteroid samples delivered by a spacecraft

[Frodo]

When the need calls for it, it is good to know we can always turn back:

Humans still have the genes for a full coat of body hair


© Dave Einsel/Getty Images

[Frodo]

And the Euclid telescope has been lifted off into the heavens on schedule and without issues:

SpaceX rocket launches Euclid space telescope to map the 'dark universe' like never before
The European spacecraft will spend six years uncovering the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

We might have to wait a few months before this telescope can make any scientific discoveries of our cosmos.  My best guess is October this year:

Over the next four weeks, Euclid will be making its journey towards Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2. Once there, it will be maneuvered into orbit around this point and mission controllers back on Earth will begin to verify the activities and functions of the spacecraft. Once the spacecraft passes all of the tests, mission control will finally turn on the scientific instruments.

Following the activation of its scientific instruments, Euclid will then undergo another two months of testing and calibrating its instruments in preparation for routine observations. The spacecraft will begin its six-year survey of one-third of the sky with "unprecedented accuracy and sensitivity."

Euclid Space Telescope Releases Stunning First Science Images
Fresh images show off the Euclid space telescope’s ability to capture crisp pictures of vast swaths of sky

And here are just a couple.  There are more in the link:


A view of the nearby spiral galaxy IC 342 from the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope. Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)


The stellar nursery of the Horsehead nebula, as seen by Euclid. Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA; J.-C. Cuillandre/CEA Paris-Saclay/G. Anselmi (image processing) (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

[Frodo]

For anyone living in or near Vancouver, British Columbia:

Interactive exhibit The Infinite takes Vancouver audiences to outer space this fall
“This was truly a once-in-a-lifetime project for us, and it’s proving to be life-changing for some of the people who have participated in The Infinite.”

A joint effort between a Montreal company and NASA has achieved something many thought to be impossible: sending average citizens into space for a visit to the International Space Station (ISS) — and beyond.

Fortunately, at no point in the journey are the travelers at risk: while able to roam an estimated 12,500 square feet of the ISS, they do so on Planet Earth, wearing Oculus headsets during a full body immersive experience that is widely regarded as setting a new standard for large scale, location-based virtual events.

The Infinite exhibition, which opens Nov. 15 in Vancouver, is an extension of Space Explorers: The ISS Experience, the largest production ever filmed in space. It is produced by Montreal’s Felix & Paul Studios in association with TIME Studios and in collaboration with ISS U.S. National Laboratory, NASA, Canadian Space Agency, and a host of other aerospace organizations.

“This was truly a once-in-a-lifetime project for us, and it’s proving to be life-changing for some of the people who have participated in The Infinite,” says Felix Lajeunesse, co-founder and creative director at Felix & Paul.

[emailking]

A blind mole that swims through sand has been rediscovered after nearly 100 years

A blind golden mole that glides through sand has been rediscovered in South Africa, 87 years after wildlife experts feared it had gone extinct.

After a two-year search relying on DNA samples and a sniffer dog, a team of conservationists and geneticists from the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) and the University of Pretoria have successfully located what’s known as De Winton’s golden mole among sand dunes in the northwest of the country.

The elusive species hadn’t been officially sighted since 1936, and prior to that was only ever found in the small region of Port Nolloth in the northern Cape. About the size of a mouse or hamster and with a shimmering coat that mimics the sand, they are difficult to spot at the best of times. On top of this, they live in largely inaccessible burrows, rarely leave tunnels behind them, and have acutely sensitive hearing that detects movements from above ground.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/01/world/de-winton-golden-mole-rediscovered-c2e-scn-spc-intl/index.html

[Blue3]

Well another theory on gravity/quantum stuff, but they're saying this one could be tested:

https://phys.org/news/2023-12-theory-einstein-gravity-quantum-mechanics.html

A radical theory that consistently unifies gravity and quantum mechanics while preserving Einstein's classical concept of spacetime has been announced in two papers published simultaneously by UCL (University College London) physicists.

Modern physics is founded upon two pillars: quantum theory on the one hand, which governs the smallest particles in the universe, and Einstein's theory of general relativity on the other, which explains gravity through the bending of spacetime. But these two theories are in contradiction with each other and a reconciliation has remained elusive for over a century.

The prevailing assumption has been that Einstein's theory of gravity must be modified, or "quantized," in order to fit within quantum theory. This is the approach of two leading candidates for a quantum theory of gravity, string theory and loop quantum gravity.

But a new theory, developed by Professor Jonathan Oppenheim (UCL Physics & Astronomy) and laid out in a paper in Physical Review X, challenges that consensus and takes an alternative approach by suggesting that spacetime may be classical—that is, not governed by quantum theory at all.

Instead of modifying spacetime, the theory—dubbed a "postquantum theory of classical gravity"—modifies quantum theory and predicts an intrinsic breakdown in predictability that is mediated by spacetime itself. This results in random and violent fluctuations in spacetime that are larger than envisaged under quantum theory, rendering the apparent weight of objects unpredictable if measured precisely enough.

A second paper, published simultaneously in Nature Communications and led by Professor Oppenheim's former Ph.D. students, looks at some of the consequences of the theory, and proposes an experiment to test it: to measure a mass very precisely to see if its weight appears to fluctuate over time.

For example, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in France routinely weigh a 1kg mass which used to be the 1kg standard. If the fluctuations in measurements of this 1kg mass are smaller than required for mathematical consistency, the theory can be ruled out.

The outcome of the experiment, or other evidence emerging that would confirm the quantum vs. classical nature of spacetime, is the subject of a 5000:1 odds bet between Professor Oppenheim and Professor Carlo Rovelli and Dr. Geoff Penington—leading proponents of quantum loop gravity and string theory respectively.

For the past five years, the UCL research group has been stress-testing the theory, and exploring its consequences.

Professor Oppenheim said, "Quantum theory and Einstein's theory of general relativity are mathematically incompatible with each other, so it's important to understand how this contradiction is resolved. Should spacetime be quantized, or should we modify quantum theory, or is it something else entirely? Now that we have a consistent fundamental theory in which spacetime does not get quantized, it's anybody's guess."

Co-author Zach Weller-Davies, who as a Ph.D. student at UCL helped develop the experimental proposal and made key contributions to the theory itself, said, "This discovery challenges our understanding of the fundamental nature of gravity but also offers avenues to probe its potential quantum nature.

"We have shown that if spacetime doesn't have a quantum nature, then there must be random fluctuations in the curvature of spacetime which have a particular signature that can be verified experimentally.

"In both quantum gravity and classical gravity, spacetime must be undergoing violent and random fluctuations all around us, but on a scale which we haven't yet been able to detect. But if spacetime is classical, the fluctuations have to be larger than a certain scale, and this scale can be determined by another experiment where we test how long we can put a heavy atom in superposition of being in two different locations."


[more in link]

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

NBC News- FDA approves sickle cell treatment using CRISPR

The therapy, called Casgevy, from Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics, is the first medicine to be approved in the United States that uses the gene-editing tool CRISPR, which won its inventors the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2020.

“I think this is a pivotal moment in the field,” said Dr. Alexis Thompson, chief of the division of hematology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who has previously consulted for Vertex. “It’s been really remarkable how quickly we went from the actual discovery of CRISPR, the awarding of a Nobel Prize, and now actually seeing it being an approved product.”

The approval marks the first of two potential breakthroughs for the inherited blood disorder. The FDA on Friday also approved a second treatment for sickle cell disease, called Lyfgenia, a gene therapy from drugmaker Bluebird Bio. Both treatments work by genetically modifying a patient’s own stem cells.

Until now, the only known cure for sickle cell disease was a bone marrow transplant from a donor, which carries the risk of rejection by the immune system, in addition to the difficult process of finding a matching donor.

Casgevy, which was approved for people ages 12 and older, removes the need for a donor. Using CRISPR, it edits the DNA found in a patient’s stem cells to remove the gene that causes the disease.

https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1733165402471924014
Great news. However, the treatment will cost around "$2 million per patient".

[dead0man]

the X37B has launched again recently for another long mission

SpaceX launched the X-37B aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida Thursday evening – marking the first time the rocket has carried the Space Force’s X-37B. On its six previous trips into orbit, the spacecraft was launched by United Launch Alliance Atlas V or SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets.

The launch was initially scheduled for Dec. 10 but was postponed multiple times that week due to poor weather conditions and on one occasion due to what SpaceX said was a "ground side issue" shortly before one of the scheduled liftoffs. SpaceX said the delays allowed its teams to conduct additional systems checks in advance of this launch window.

The Boeing X-37B is an unmanned, robotic spacecraft operated by the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office in collaboration with the Space Force. Its design resembles a smaller version of the Space Shuttle and is based on an earlier variant of the spacecraft used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), known as the X-37A.

[Frodo]

The Xuntian space telescope hasn't even been launched into orbit yet, and already the Chinese are claiming bragging rights over it:

Chinese astronomers say their new space telescope will outdo Hubble

They had to delay its launch by a year:

China Delays Launch of Its Xuntian Space Telescope
The Xuntian Space Telescope is China’s entry in a global race to unlock the secrets of dark energy, and it will now lift off no earlier than mid-2025
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Edit -I know the article is from November, but I only just found about it.  

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

Is quantum computers (mostly) just hype?

Quantum computers were sold as revolutionary now 10 years ago.
Google's Quantum Computer Proven To Be Real Thing (Almost) (D-Wave)
https://www.wired.com/2013/06/d-wave-quantum-computer-usc/

I don't want to be a hypocrite here since I dislike when people think they're being critical but really they're just expressing impatience. (I.E 'it's your second day, and you still haven't finished building Rome!')

But, 10 years is actually a fairly long time in computing especially given that quantum computers have basically dropped off the public radar since then, but more importantly:

Hype is everywhere, skeptics say, and practical applications are still far away. The quantum computer revolution may be further off and more limited than many have been led to believe. That's the message coming from a small but vocal set of prominent skeptics in and around the emerging quantum computing industry.
IEEE Spectrum

Is quantum computing another example of vaporware?

I bring up quantum computers because I heard them mentioned yesterday on this radio program: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-55-spark/clip/16034991-surprising-reasons-optimistic-2024

Spark is the radio show.

There's an interesting segment on that episode about video games based on news stories.

[Blue3]

https://twitter.com/redditSpaceView/status/1305612665293811712?s=20

A little old but worth it

[Frodo]

Chemists have just discovered the origins of life in a lab, or at least made great strides doing so:

How did life on Earth begin? The chemical puzzle just became clearer.

People have long scratched their heads trying to understand how life ever got going after the formation of Earth billions of years ago. Now, chemists have partly unlocked the recipe by creating a complex compound essential to all life — in a lab.

Like making the ingredients of a cake, researchers have successfully created a compound critical for metabolism in all living cells, which is essential for energy production and regulation. The pathway, which has evaded scientists for decades, involved relatively simple molecules probably present on early Earth that combined at room temperature over months.

The discovery provides support to the idea that many key components for life could have simultaneously formed early on and combined to make living cells.

“Why do we have life? Why do the rules of chemistry mean life here looks the way it does?” said Matthew Powner, senior author of the research paper. These are “just the most fantastic questions we could possibly answer.”

The ingredient is called pantetheine. 

[Frodo]

The story of how Earth got all its water is -appropriately- complex:

God I love PBS Eons. 

[Frodo]

This could have implications for the field of astrobiology as well:

‘Monumental’ experiment suggests how life on Earth may have started

A much-debated theory holds that 4 billion years ago, give or take, long before the appearance of dinosaurs or even bacteria, the primordial soup contained only the possibility of life. Then a molecule called RNA took a dramatic step into the future: It made a copy of itself.

Then the copy made a copy, and over the course of many millions of years, RNA begot DNA and proteins, all of which came together to form a cell, the smallest unit of life able to survive on its own.

Now, in an important advance supporting this RNA World theory, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., have carried out a small but essential part of the story. In test tubes, they developed an RNA molecule that was able to make accurate copies of a different type of RNA.

The work, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, gets them closer to the grand goal of growing an RNA molecule that makes accurate copies of itself.

“Then it would be alive,” said Gerald Joyce, president of Salk and one of the authors of the new paper. “So, this is the road to how life can arise in a laboratory or, in principle, anywhere in the universe.”

The team remains a ways off from showing that this is how life on Earth truly began, but the scenario they tested probably mimics one of the earliest stirrings of evolution, a concept described by the English naturalist Charles Darwin more than 150 years ago.

“This is a steppingstone toward understanding how life evolved,” said Nikolaos Papastavrou, first author of the paper and a Salk postdoctoral fellow.

[Torrain]

There’s been some very promising results in the attempt to use CRISPR to excise HIV from the cells of those infected with the virus.

All in cell-culture in the moment, so we’ve got a way to go yet, but even showing the ability to purge model cells of HIV is a huge step towards a permanent cure, that could help us similarly excise viruses responsible for cancer, associated with chronic fatigue, etc.

Also provides a foundation for targeted genetic changes to improve cancer prognosis more generally.

[emailking]

Hyper-sexual "zombie cicadas" that are infected with sexually transmitted fungus expected to emerge this year

Trillions of cicadas will emerge across several U.S. states this spring in an event one expert dubbed "cicada-geddon." Not only are more cicadas than usual expected this year, but some of them will be "zombie cicadas" that are infected by a sexually transmitted fungus that makes them hyper-sexual.

Periodical cicadas spend most of their lives underground and only emerge after 13 or 17 years. This year, two broods of cicadas will emerge: Brood XIX, which comes out every 13 years, will emerge in the Georgia and Southeast, and Brood XIII, which emerges every 17 years, will appear in Illinois.

With this convergence, the bugs will arrive in numbers that have not been seen in generations.

Matthew Kasson, an associate professor of Mycology and Forest Pathology at West Virginia University, says both of these broods can be infected by a fungal pathogen called Massospora cicadina.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cicadas-zombies-hyper-sexual-sexually-transmitted-fungus-expected-to-emerge-this-year-massospora-cicadina/

[Frodo]

The largest 3-D map of the universe reveals hints of dark energy’s secrets
Dark energy might evolve over time, results from a major cosmic survey suggest


Researchers have made the largest 3-D map of the universe to study the properties of dark energy. Here a thin slice through the map is shown, with a magnified section revealing further detail.

CLAIRE LAMMAN/DESI COLLABORATION; CUSTOM COLORMAP PACKAGE BY CMASTRO

[emailking]

Along those lines, there was an article in Scientific American a few months back about the "voids" in the universe (the dark spots in the above map) where there is almost nothing at all (except dark energy, which is mostly constant) for truly vast distances. They are understudied but may be extremely important to understanding the evolution of the universe.

[Frodo]

Along those lines, there was an article in Scientific American a few months back about the "voids" in the universe (the dark spots in the above map) where there is almost nothing at all (except dark energy, which is mostly constant) for truly vast distances. They are understudied but may be extremely important to understanding the evolution of the universe.

Do you think you could find it?

[Frodo]

So geologically speaking, Scandinavia 'belongs' to Greenland:

New geological study: Scandinavia was born in Greenland
The oldest Scandinavian bedrock was 'born' in Greenland according to a new geological study from the University of Copenhagen. The study helps us understand the origin of continents and why Earth is the only planet in our solar system with life.

[Frodo]

Climate change ultimately led our earliest ancestors to develop speech and language, apparently:

Change in landscape for early hominids may have led to the development of speech, new study finds
A turning point in language development occurred in the Miocene Era

Scientists have discovered what may have prompted early human ancestors to begin developing speech and language.

As the landscape in which ancient hominids lived transformed from dense forests to open plains during the Miocene era, between 5.3 million and 16 million years ago, the transformation may have prompted the hominids to develop language, switching from vowel-based calls to consonant-based calls, according to a study published in the journal Nature on Thursday.

Hominids -- a family of primates from which homo sapiens evolved -- lived in treetops prior to a change in climate in the Middle and Late Miocene era that led to wide-open grasslands replacing forests in Africa, and hominids transitioning from living primarily in trees to moving onto the ground.

Modern language still had millions of years after the Miocene era to get to its current form, Gannon said, but noted that this early expansion of speech was a "pivotal" turning point in language development for humans.

Out of all the hominid species, homo sapiens is the only one to emerge with a "rich" spoken language, Gannon said.

Yes, I know this is from last December.