Slim Boom. Credit: Phil Drury, University of Sheffield
An explosion the size of our solar system has baffled scientists, as part of its shape—similar to that of an extremely flat disk—challenges everything we know about explosions in space.
The explosion observed was a bright Fast Blue Optical Transient (FBOT)—an extremely rare class of explosion which is much less common than other explosions, such as supernovas. The first bright FBOT was discovered in 2018 and given the nickname "the cow."
Explosions of stars in the universe are almost always spherical in shape, as the stars themselves are spherical. However, this explosion, which occurred 180 million light years away, is the most aspherical ever seen in space, with a shape like a disk emerging a few days after it was discovered. This section of the explosion may have come from material shed by the star just before it exploded.
It's still unclear how bright FBOT explosions occur, but it's hoped that this observation, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, will bring us closer to understanding them.
Dr. Justyn Maund, Lead Author of the study from the University of Sheffield's Department of Physics and Astronomy, said, "Very little is known about FBOT explosions—they just don't behave like exploding stars should, they are too bright and they evolve too quickly. Put simply, they are weird, and this new observation makes them even weirder."
"Hopefully this new finding will help us shed a bit more light on them—we never thought that explosions could be this aspherical. There are a few potential explanations for it: the stars involved may have created a disk just before they died or these could be failed supernovas, where the core of the star collapses to a blackhole or neutron star which then eats the rest of the star."
"What we now know for sure is that the levels of asymmetry recorded are a key part of understanding these mysterious explosions, and it challenges our preconceptions of how stars might explode in the universe."
Scientists made the discovery after spotting a flash of polarized light completely by chance. They were able to measure the polarization of the blast—using the astronomical equivalent of polaroid sunglasses—with the Liverpool Telescope (owned by Liverpool John Moores University) located on La Palma.
By measuring the polarization, it allowed them to measure the shape of the explosion, effectively seeing something the size of our solar system but in a galaxy 180 million light years away. They were then able to use the data to reconstruct the 3D shape of the explosion, and were able to map the edges of the blast—allowing them to see just how flat it was.
The mirror of the Liverpool Telescope is only 2.0m in diameter, but by studying the polarization the astronomers were able to reconstruct the shape of the explosion as if the telescope had a diameter of about 750km.
Researchers will now undertake a new survey with the international Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, which is expected to help discover more FBOTs and further understand them.
More information: Justyn R Maund et al, A flash of polarized optical light points to an aspherical 'cow', Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2023). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stad539
Citation: Scientists observe flattest explosion ever seen in space (2023, March 30) retrieved 31 March 2023 from https://ift.tt/ld9oDO4
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
Scientists may have identified an ultramassive black hole 30 billion times the mass of our sun hiding in an image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Black holes are born when colossal stars many times the size of our sun run out of fuel, and collapse in on themselves in spectacular fashion. The resulting singularity is incredibly dense, and boasts a gravitational pull so powerful that light itself cannot escape it.
For example, feeding black holes draw in material from nearby clouds, planets, and stars, which becomes superheated as it spirals ever closer to the event horizon, triggering the release of visible light, X-rays, and other forms of radiation.
Because of this, feeding black holes are relatively easy to see, and understand. On the flip side, black holes that aren’t actively consuming mass are incredibly difficult to spot.
In a new study, scientists were able to detect the presence of a leviathan, hidden black hole by solving the riddle behind the creation of an arc of light in an image from the Hubble Space Telescope.
The strange curve in the Hubble image - which can be seen in the explainer video embedded above - was created by a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, wherein the influence of a massive object warps the path of light travelling towards Earth from a distant background light source, such as a galaxy.
A team of scientists ran a series of supercomputer simulations in an attempt to identify the source of the lensing captured in the image. Each recreation explored how the presence of black holes of varying masses embedded in a foreground galaxy could bend the light emanating from the more distant background galaxy in different ways.
The team discovered that they could recreate the unique lensing seen in the Hubble image by introducing a monstrous black hole to the simulation, which, embedded in the heart of the closest galaxy, had a mass the equivilent to 30 billion Suns.
If the singularity does indeed exist as the simulations suggest, it would be “one of the largest black hole masses measured to date, and qualifies it as an ultramassive black hole”, according to the new paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. However, the authors also note that further investigation will be needed “to draw firm conclusions”.
The scientists hope that their research will lead to a deeper understanding of the enormous black holes lurking at the heart of every large galaxy.
Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI)
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Science
Slim Boom. Credit: Phil Drury, University of Sheffield
An explosion the size of our solar system has baffled scientists, as part of its shape—similar to that of an extremely flat disk—challenges everything we know about explosions in space.
The explosion observed was a bright Fast Blue Optical Transient (FBOT)—an extremely rare class of explosion which is much less common than other explosions, such as supernovas. The first bright FBOT was discovered in 2018 and given the nickname "the cow."
Explosions of stars in the universe are almost always spherical in shape, as the stars themselves are spherical. However, this explosion, which occurred 180 million light years away, is the most aspherical ever seen in space, with a shape like a disk emerging a few days after it was discovered. This section of the explosion may have come from material shed by the star just before it exploded.
It's still unclear how bright FBOT explosions occur, but it's hoped that this observation, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, will bring us closer to understanding them.
Dr. Justyn Maund, Lead Author of the study from the University of Sheffield's Department of Physics and Astronomy, said, "Very little is known about FBOT explosions—they just don't behave like exploding stars should, they are too bright and they evolve too quickly. Put simply, they are weird, and this new observation makes them even weirder."
"Hopefully this new finding will help us shed a bit more light on them—we never thought that explosions could be this aspherical. There are a few potential explanations for it: the stars involved may have created a disk just before they died or these could be failed supernovas, where the core of the star collapses to a blackhole or neutron star which then eats the rest of the star."
"What we now know for sure is that the levels of asymmetry recorded are a key part of understanding these mysterious explosions, and it challenges our preconceptions of how stars might explode in the universe."
Scientists made the discovery after spotting a flash of polarized light completely by chance. They were able to measure the polarization of the blast—using the astronomical equivalent of polaroid sunglasses—with the Liverpool Telescope (owned by Liverpool John Moores University) located on La Palma.
By measuring the polarization, it allowed them to measure the shape of the explosion, effectively seeing something the size of our solar system but in a galaxy 180 million light years away. They were then able to use the data to reconstruct the 3D shape of the explosion, and were able to map the edges of the blast—allowing them to see just how flat it was.
The mirror of the Liverpool Telescope is only 2.0m in diameter, but by studying the polarization the astronomers were able to reconstruct the shape of the explosion as if the telescope had a diameter of about 750km.
Researchers will now undertake a new survey with the international Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, which is expected to help discover more FBOTs and further understand them.
More information: Justyn R Maund et al, A flash of polarized optical light points to an aspherical 'cow', Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2023). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stad539
Citation: Scientists observe flattest explosion ever seen in space (2023, March 30) retrieved 31 March 2023 from https://ift.tt/ld9oDO4
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
Scientists recorded the popping noises that plants make in response to stresses like dehydration or a cut.
Humans have glorious ways of vocalizing discontent: We grumble, grouse, gripe, groan, moan. One might think airing complaints requires, at the very least, a mouth. But recent research from the plant kingdom shows that a mouth isn’t essential.
Stressed plants make audible sounds that can be heard many feet away, and the type of sound corresponds with the kind of bad day they are having. The results were published Thursday in the journal Cell.
To be clear, the sounds made by harried plants are not the same as the anxious mumbling you might utter if you have a big deadline at work. The researchers suspect the nervous, popping noise is instead a byproduct of cavitation, when tiny bubbles burst and produce mini-shock waves inside the plant’s vascular system, not unlike what happens in your joints when you crack your knuckles.
Feed Me, Seymour
This is the sound of a tomato plant that hasn’t gotten enough water.
“Cavitation is the most likely explanation, at least for most of the sounds,” said Lilach Hadany, a biologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel. Plants interact with organisms that produce sounds all the time — like buzzing bees — and also communicate with other life-forms, including other plants, by emitting chemicals, called volatiles. But when it came to research on plants detecting — or producing — audible sounds, the literature had been silent.
“One open question that bugged me,” Dr. Hadany said, “was the problem of plants and sounds.”
After she met Yossi Yovel, who was studying bat sounds at Tel Aviv, they decided to team up to tackle the question together. They focused on tomato and tobacco plants because they are easy to grow and have well-understood genetics.
Plants were placed in wooden soundproof boxes with two microphones pointing at their stems, ready to record anything from a subtle whisper to an outburst of slam poetry. The researchers found that not only did the plants make sounds, but that the plants also made much more of a ruckus when they were dehydrated or having their stems cut (simulating an herbivore attack).
An experimental setup with a cactus.Lilach Hadany
The researchers were able to pick up the same sounds from plants in a greenhouse, too. They have since detected sounds made by other greenery, such as grapevines and wheat.
The vexed vegetables didn’t air their grievances randomly but rather made specific complaints that matched up with the type of stresses they were under. A machine-learning program could correctly tell, with 70 percent accuracy, whether the grumbling plant was thirsty or at risk of decapitation.
Heard It From the Grapevine
A recording of a grapevine’s reaction to being cut.
“That the plants are making different noises that have some information seems like the main contribution of this study,” said Richard Karban, an ecologist at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved with the research. “I think it will move the field forward.”
The peeved plants aren’t making sounds that humans can hear — they’re too high-pitched, and researchers had to process them into sounds you can hear now. But the sounds do fall within the hearing range of other animals, like mice and moths. Given that the popping sounds can be heard up to 16 feet away, there’s also the question of whether other plants could be listening in to their neighbors’ drama.
The Wheat Is Growing Thin
This is a recording of wheat that probably wished it lived by the river.
Dr. Hadany’s group previously showed in a 2019 paper that some flowers respond to the sound of approaching pollinators by making more nectar. Finding out whether any other organisms respond to the noises made by stressed-out plants, as well as potentially using the information such noises suggest about the plants’ conditions, is an important next step.
Dr. Karban could see other plant biologists raising doubts about the implications of the results but said that they highlighted the surprising sophistication of plants. As sedentary organisms, plants are “exquisitely aware of their environments,” he said.
And after reading about this study, you may find yourself wondering whether the houseplant on your windowsill is plaintively wailing about the conditions you’ve left it in.
WASHINGTON — NASA and Boeing have pushed back the first crewed launch of the company’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft with astronauts on board until at least late July because of certification paperwork that has taken longer than expected to complete.
In a call with reporters March 29, officials said they had rescheduled the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission to no earlier than July 21. The announcement came six days after NASA said that CFT would not take place by the end of April, as previously scheduled, but offered few details why.
Steve Stich, NASA commercial crew program manager, said most of the work needed to prepare the CFT mission for launch to the International Space Station will be done by April. An exception, he said, is certification work on the capsule’s parachutes. “There’s no issues or concerns with the parachute system,” he said. “It’s just a matter of going through all that data and looking at the data and making sure we’re ready to go fly safely.”
The parachutes are installed on the spacecraft, but Stich said one more ground test is planned of an element of the parachute system, a parachute that removes the cover on the top of the spacecraft to expose the rest of the parachute deployment system. That test is designed to confirm that it can operate as planned in what he described as the “highest possible regime” during an abort.
Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager for Starliner at Boeing, said the delay in that parachute certification work was the fault of both the company and NASA. “It took longer for us to get the product over to NASA, and it’s taken a little bit longer for NASA to review it with us,” he said.
Officials did not discuss any potential issues with certification paperwork during a Feb. 17 briefing, when they expressed confidence in launching CFT by the end of April. Stich said at the time that they have completed 80% of the preparations for the mission and neither he nor Nappi raised issues like the certification work as a challenge to that schedule.
“Perhaps we were a little optimistic on those reviews of those products in setting the April timeframe,” Stich said. “We knew that April was a good time to go fly” given the schedule of other crew and cargo missions to the station.
When it became clear they would not be ready for an April launch, NASA and Boeing considered options for a May launch, but concluded it did not work well. A SpaceX cargo Dragon mission is scheduled to launch to the station in June, occupying the docking port Starliner would use. “We came to the conclusion that the July window would be best,” he said.
That revised schedule will also allow engineers more time to check out avionics systems on the vehicle after finding a logic error in a “black box” unit called an integrated propulsion controller. “We want to make sure that condition doesn’t exist anywhere else,” Nappi said.
The extra testing will make sure “we’ve really wrung out the system for crewed flight,” Stich said. “We want to go look at the whole system to make sure we’re ready to go fly.”
The July 21 date is not finalized and will depend on working out a range conflict with a U.S. Space Force mission also planned to launch around that time on another Atlas 5. “We’ll have to go work with the Space Force and ULA to see the readiness of our vehicle and the readiness of their vehicle and whether we get that slot,” Stich said. He did not identify the conflicting mission, but a classified mission designated USSF-51 is scheduled to launch as soon as June according to current manifests.
Soyuz update
The Starliner briefing took place a day after the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, which suffered a coolant leak in December, undocked from the station without a crew and landed in Kazakhstan. Immediately after the landing there were reports that temperatures in the capsule rose to 50 degrees Celsius, which would have endangered the health of anyone on board.
Joel Montalbano, NASA ISS program manager, said he had heard those reports, but they did not match up with other data from the spacecraft. “We have a number of questions open with our Russian colleagues to better understand that,” he said. He declined to say what temperatures he had heard the capsule experienced.
He estimated it would take two to three weeks to review the data from the Soyuz return, working with Roscosmos. “There’s so many questions on this that trying to speculate isn’t going to help anything.”
Once engineers understand what happened with Soyuz MS-22, he said, “that’s when we’ll decide as a joint team, between NASA and Roscosmos to return crew members.” He added the Soyuz MS-23, launched without a crew in February to replace Soyuz MS-22, is working normally.
Montalbano said that the current schedule calls for Soyuz MS-23 to return Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin and American astronaut Frank Rubio to Earth on Sept. 27. If that schedule holds, the three will have spent 371 days in space on their mission, which for Rubio will set a record for longest single spaceflight by an American astronaut.
Enlarge/ Starliner touches down in December 2019 for the first time.
NASA/Aubrey Gemignani
NASA and Boeing announced Wednesday that the first crewed flight of the Starliner spacecraft will now take place no earlier than July 21. This moves the vehicle's flight, carrying NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, from the previously announced timeframe of April.
The manager of NASA's Commercial Crew program, Steve Stich, said the delay was attributable to the extra time needed to close out the pre-flight review process of Starliner and also due to traffic from other vehicles visiting the space station in June and the first half of July.
"When we look at all the different pieces, most of the work will be complete in April for the flight," Stich said during a teleconference with reporters. "But there's one area that's extending out into the May time frame, and this really has to do with the certification products for the parachute system."
Boeing has conducted more than 20 tests of its parachute system, including dropping the vehicle from different altitudes to test their deployment sequence and how the parachutes perform in different environments to simulate returning from space. Stich said there are no issues with the parachutes, which are installed on Starliner already. Mostly, it is about reviewing all the tests Boeing has done to ensure the parachutes performed as intended.
"It's just a matter of going through all that data and looking at the data and making sure we're really ready to go fly safely," Stich said.
There is one final test to be completed on the ground, he said, of a parachute subsystem that pulls Starliner's forward heat shield away and sets up deployment of the drogue and then main parachutes. That test is targeted for May.
The additional time needed to complete the review process of Starliner and its parachute system delayed the vehicle's launch into June. However, at that time, NASA plans to launch SpaceX's CRS-28 cargo resupply mission, which will tie up one of the lab's docking hatches. This supply mission is bringing solar arrays to the station that NASA does not want to delay because it would delay planned spacewalks to install them. The lack of a docking port, therefore, pushed the Starliner flight into the second half of July.
NASA and Boeing must also balance schedules with United Launch Alliance, which is boosting the mission to orbit with its Atlas V rocket. The company presently has the USSF-51 mission scheduled for the Space Force this summer and also needs the Space Launch Complex-41 pad for the debut of its Vulcan rocket in May or later this summer.
This will be the third flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft. The vehicle's debut in December 2019 failed to rendezvous with the International Space Station after multiple issues, including software problems. After fixing these issues, Boeing flew the vehicle on a second test flight in May 2022. Although there were some propulsion issues with this flight, Starliner docked with the space station, setting the stage for a crewed flight test.
After Boeing completes this critical test flight and NASA certifies the vehicle as ready for operational missions, the company will fly approximately once a year to the space station for regular crew rotations. The first of these operational missions is planned for no earlier than the spring of 2024.
An artist’s impression of a black hole, where the black hole’s intense gravitational field distorts the space around it. This warps images of background light, lined up almost directly behind it, into distinct circular rings. This gravitational "lensing" effect offers an observation method to infer the presence of black holes and measure their mass, based on how significant the light bending is. The Hubble Space Telescope targets distant galaxies whose light passes very close to the centers of intervening fore-ground galaxies, which are expected to host supermassive black-holes over a billion times the mass of the sun. Credit: ESA/Hubble, Digitized Sky Survey, Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org), N. Bartmann
A team of astronomers has discovered one of the biggest black holes ever found, taking advantage of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.
The team, led by Durham University, UK, used gravitational lensing—where a foreground galaxy bends the light from a more distant object and magnifies it—and supercomputer simulations on the DiRAC HPC facility, which enabled the team to closely examine how light is bent by a black hole inside a galaxy hundreds of millions of light years from Earth.
They found an ultramassive black hole, an object over 30 billion times the mass of our sun, in the foreground galaxy—a scale rarely seen by astronomers.
This is the first black hole found using the technique, whereby the team simulates light traveling through the universe hundreds of thousands of times. Each simulation includes a different mass black hole, changing light's journey to Earth.
When the researchers included an ultramassive black hole in one of their simulations the path taken by the light from the faraway galaxy to reach Earth matched the path seen in real images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The findings are published today in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
A video showing how Astronomers used gravitational lensing to discover a black hole 30 billion times the mass of the sun in a galaxy 2 billion light years away. Credit: Durham University
Lead author Dr. James Nightingale, Department of Physics, Durham University, said, "This particular black hole, which is roughly 30 billion times the mass of our sun, is one of the biggest ever detected and on the upper limit of how large we believe black holes can theoretically become, so it is an extremely exciting discovery."
A gravitational lens occurs when the gravitational field of a foreground galaxy appears to bend the light of a background galaxy, meaning that we observe it more than once.
Like a real lens, this also magnifies the background galaxy, allowing scientists to study it in enhanced detail.
Video still—black hole—lensing geometry. Credit: Durham University
Video still—black hole—observed image. Credit: Durham University
Dr. Nightingale said, "Most of the biggest black holes that we know about are in an active state, where matter pulled in close to the black hole heats up and releases energy in the form of light, X-rays, and other radiation."
"However, gravitational lensing makes it possible to study inactive black holes, something not currently possible in distant galaxies. This approach could let us detect many more black holes beyond our local universe and reveal how these exotic objects evolved further back in cosmic time."
The study, which also includes Germany's Max Planck Institute, opens up the tantalizing possibility that astronomers can discover far more inactive and ultramassive black holes than previously thought, and investigate how they grew so large.
The story of this particular discovery started back in 2004 when fellow Durham University astronomer, Professor Alastair Edge, noticed a giant arc of a gravitational lens when reviewing images of a galaxy survey.
Video still—black hole—mass correct. Credit: Durham University
Video still—black hole—mass too high. Credit: Durham University
Video still—black hole—mass too low. Credit: Durham University
Fast forward 19 years and with the help of some extremely high-resolution images from NASA's Hubble telescope and the DiRAC COSMA8 supercomputer facilities at Durham University, Dr. Nightingale and his team were able to revisit this and explore it further.
The team hopes that this is the first step in enabling a deeper exploration of the mysteries of black holes, and that future large-scale telescopes will help astronomers study even more distant black holes to learn more about their size and scale.
More information: James Nightingale et al, Abell 1201: Detection of an Ultramassive Black Hole in a Strong Gravitational Lens, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2023). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stad587
Citation: Light-bending gravity reveals one of the biggest black holes ever found (2023, March 28) retrieved 29 March 2023 from https://ift.tt/N6HRroP
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Evolution has saved roach reproduction from an earlier mutation that interfered with how males court females.
When a male roach wants to mate with a female roach, he will back up to her, secreting a solution called a nuptial gift from a gland under his wings. In this case, the gift was rejected.Ayako Wada-Katsumata
Cockroaches are changing up their sex lives, and it’s all our fault. Faced with sweet poisoned bait, roaches first ended up with a mutation that made them hate sweets, hindering their mating strategies. Now, more roach mutations are emerging, showing you can’t keep a good pest down.
Like many animals, cockroaches have a sweet tooth, and that preference for sugar plays a central role in their reproductive activities. When a male roach targets a female roach, he will back up to her, secreting a solution called a nuptial gift from the tergal gland under his wings. The solution is full of proteins, fats and sugars, what some researchers call the chocolate of roach food. The female cockroach will crawl up on his back to take a sample, and while she is occupied, the male will whip out a hooked penis to latch onto her reproductive tract. They will then turn back to back and do the deed for about 90 minutes.
Humans have aimed to exploit this love of sweet stuff to push cockroaches — particularly the German cockroaches that turn up in American homes — out of our spaces. For decades, people used poisoned roach baits baited with solutions containing glucose.
Cockroaches took the bait. But some time in the late 20th century, a new mutation arose — glucose aversion. No one knows how many roaches now hate the sweet stuff, but Coby Schal, an evolutionary biologist at North Carolina State University, suspects the mutation is very common. “There are more and more papers being published on the fact that a whole suite of baits don’t work so well,” he said.
This lack of a sweet tooth saved cockroaches from death, but it hurt their sex lives. The gift that normal males secrete contains maltose, a sugar that cockroach saliva transforms into glucose. But if females had the glucose averse mutation, they did not find the male secretions sexy and turned away before the male could hook on.
But Dr. Schal and his colleagues could not help but notice that males with glucose aversion were still getting lucky with glucose-averse females. They took a close look, comparing mating between sweets-loving roaches and the sugar-free variety.
The male tergal gland (left reservoir occluded).Ayako Wada-Katsumata
In a study published on Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the scientists showed that the glucose-averse males had accumulated additional mutations. Instead of producing nuptial gifts containing more maltose, they produced ones that contained a more complex sugar, maltotriose. That substance takes longer to break down into glucose in a female roach’s saliva, Dr. Schal said, and “it’s actually preferred by females.”
But even with a sweeter gift, the glucose-averse roaches were taking no chances. Sugar-loving males took a lengthy 3.3 seconds to begin mating with a female while she dined, Dr. Schal said, which meant they only succeeded about half the time. Sugar-free males leaped into action in 2.1 seconds, succeeding 60 percent of the time.
Marlene Zuk, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities who was not involved in the study, praised it, saying it was interesting to “people who don’t care about cockroaches qua cockroaches” and that it revealed facets of how mating behaviors evolve.
“It illustrates really well that there’s this constant balance,” between the pressures of survival and the pressure to mate as much as possible, she said.
But the latest mutations emerged among lab-reared roaches, noted Richard ffrench-Constant, who studies the molecular biology of insects at the University of Exeter in England.
“Whether these are the traits that are really going to emerge in nature I think is open to discussion,” said Dr. ffrench-Constant, who was not involved in the study.
Dr. Zuk added that these mutations did not emerge purposefully. Glucose aversion solved one problem and created another, but male roaches were not going around trying to make sweeter nuptial gifts. For every mutation that helps a roach get lucky, another might achieve the opposite.
“Stuff just happens,” she said. “There’s no guarantee that says you’re going to make it somehow.”
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have named a newly discovered species of ancient beaver after Buc-ee’s, the chain of convenience stores known for its namesake mascot.
The new species is called "Anchitheriomys buceei," or "A. buceei" for the rest of us.
The researchers' findings were published in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica. (UT JACKSON SCHOOL OF GEOSCIENCES)
Research associate Steve May of the UT Jackson School of Geosciences, told UT News the name was inspired by the beaver’s Texas connection and a chance encounter with a Buc-ee’s billboard that read: "This is Beaver Country."
"I thought, ‘Yeah, it is beaver country, and it has been for millions of years,’" May told the outlet.
His paper describing the new species – as well as a smaller species of fossil beaver – was published in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica. Bones and archival records suggest the animal lived along the Texas Gulf Coast between 15 and 22 million years ago.
The fossils also show A. buceei that were about 30% larger than modern beavers roaming Texas today – though smaller than the "bear-size" beavers in North America during the Ice Age.
A diagram showing how the A. buceei compares to a modern North American Beaver. (UT Jackson School of Geosciences)
Most of the fossils have been reconstructed from a partial skull from Burkeville, Texas. It’s a fusion of bone and brain cast created when sediment seeped into the beaver’s brain cavity, creating a rock replica of the brain as the specimen fossilized.
May and Matthew Brown, the study’s co-author, used high-resolution X-ray images of the skull to bring into view anatomical details that helped confirm it was a new species.
After hearing of the new species’ name, Buc-ee’s CEO and founder Arch "Beaver" Aplin III quipped: "Buc-ee’s was founded in 1982, but we may need to rethink our beginnings."
Buc-ee's has become so deeply enmeshed in Texas culture that even the Alamo gave it a social media shout-out in 2018.
Bradford Betz is a Fox News Digital breaking reporter covering crime, political issues, and much more.
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NEW YORK (AP) — Keep an eye to the sky this week for a chance to see a planetary hangout.
Five planets — Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Uranus and Mars — will line up near the moon.
WHERE AND WHEN CAN YOU SEE THEM?
The best day to catch the whole group is Tuesday. You’ll want to look to the western horizon right after sunset, said NASA astronomer Bill Cooke.
The planets will stretch from the horizon line to around halfway up the night sky. But don't be late: Mercury and Jupiter will quickly dip below the horizon around half an hour after sunset.
The five-planet spread can be seen from anywhere on Earth, as long as you have clear skies and a view of the west.
“That’s the beauty of these planetary alignments. It doesn’t take much,” Cooke said.
DO I NEED BINOCULARS?
Maybe. Jupiter, Venus and Mars will all be pretty easy to see since they shine brightly, Cooke said. Venus will be one of the brightest things in the sky, and Mars will be hanging out near the moon with a reddish glow. Mercury and Uranus could be trickier to spot, since they will be dimmer. You’ll probably need to grab a pair of binoculars.
If you’re a “planet collector,” it’s a rare chance to spot Uranus, which usually isn't visible, Cooke said. Look out for its green glow just above Venus.
DOES THIS HAPPEN OFTEN?
Different numbers and groups of planets line up in the sky from time to time. There was a five-planet lineup last summer and there's another one in June, with a slightly different makeup.
This kind of alignment happens when the planets’ orbits line them up on one side of the sun from Earth’s perspective, Cooke said.
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An asteroid around the size of almost 33 armadillos is set to pass by Earth on Sunday, according to NASA's asteroid tracker.
The asteroid in question has been designated 2023 FL2 and was discovered just this year, according to the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
For those wondering how this measurement is being calculated, the metric is the total length of the nine-banded armadillo species of armadillos, including the tail, and not while it is rolled up into a ball.
How big is the asteroid coming toward Earth in 2023?
Asteroid 2023 FL2 is approaching the smaller side, as far as most asteroids go, with NASA estimating its diameter to be as much as 35 meters.
Let's put that astronomical – literally, not figuratively – size in a more down-to-Earth perspective using an adorable armored mammal: The armadillo.
A small nine-banded armadillo. At full size, these little armored mammals can be just over a meter long. (Illustrative) (credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Of the 21 species of armadillo, the most common is the nine-banded armadillo, which can grow to as much as 107 centimeters in length provided it isn't rolled up into a ball.
In other words, asteroid 2023 FL2's diameter is just shy of 33 nine-banded armadillos lined up in a row, tail to snout.
In captivity, these armadillos have weighed as much as 80 kilograms, but undoubtedly a large asteroid is going to be much heavier.
Is an asteroid going to hit Earth in 2023?
Residents of the US South and Central America familiar with the local armadillos may have seen them jump surprisingly high, but these armored animals are in no danger of curling up in the air and then colliding down upon an unsuspecting human with the force of a meteor.
But can the same be said of asteroid 2023 FL2?
According to NASA, this asteroid has no risk of hitting the Earth.
To explain, NASA JPL calculated that this asteroid will pass Earth at a distance of over 4.6 million kilometers. To put this into perspective, the Moon only orbits the Earth at an average of 384,000 kilometers.
So no, it won't hit us, and at its size, it would probably be too severe if it hit the Earth.
For example, some of the previous recent asteroid impacts, such as the Corgi-sized meteor that weighed as much as four baby elephants that crashed in Texas, didn't result in any damage.
In fact, armadillos might actually be more dangerous – they are one of the few mammals that are vectors of leprosy.
This illustration depicts NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft prior to impact at the Didymos binary asteroid system. DART's target asteroid is the moonlet Dimorphos, which orbits the larger asteroid Didymos; the pair are not a threat to Earth. (credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)
Do we have any way to stop an asteroid from hitting the Earth?
Thankfully we do.
The field of planetary defense is filled with scientists from all over the world working on efforts to stop asteroid impacts, which are arguably the single most dangerous possible natural disaster.
So far, this field has seen some promising work, the most notable of which being NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission, which was launched to crash into the faraway asteroid Dimorphous in the Didymous system in order to see if its trajectory would be altered.
To put it simply, they punched an asteroid with a spacecraft to make it move, changing its orbital trajectory. And it worked.
Later, another study confirmed its success and scientists are now certain that humanity is capable of preventing a dangerous asteroid from impacting Earth, provided we have enough time in advance to get this done.
Now, all we need to do is keep planetary defense research rolling – like a curled-up armadillo.
On March 27, 2023, Mercury, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Uranus will align and display themselves in a row across the night sky.
Annually, March is a time that all 110 deep-sky objects, cataloged by French astronomer Charles Messier, become visible, according to science media outlet Space.com. Deep-sky objects are classified as any astronomical body that is not part of a solar system.
In honor of the French astronomer, amateur astronomers worldwide will be participating in the Messier Marathon this week. During this time, they try to spot as many of the 110 objects as possible.
How to get the best experience
It is recommended that those wishing to partake in the occasion find an observational site with a clear view of the western horizon, according to Space.com.
The site also recommends the use of binoculars that are 7x magnification and either 33mm diameter or 50mm diameter (7 x 35 or 7 x 50).
bibi binoculars 311 (credit: AP)
The viewing time is short, so advance preparation is crucial. The planets will be viewable approximately 20-25 minutes after the sun has set.
Identifying the planets
The first two planets to appear will both shine brightly. Although Mercury will shine only slightly less brightly than the brightest star Sirius, according to Space.com.
Mercury will slowly be moving away from the sun, which should make it more visible.
To the left of Mercury, Jupiter will be shining twice as brightly. However, Jupiter will move toward the sun, which may obstruct the view.
Venus will be slowly rising for spectators in the western hemisphere, making it easy to identify. In a few months from now, Venus will be viewable only an hour after sunset, according to Space.com.
Mercury and Jupiter will swap positions on Monday, according to science news outlet LiveScience.com.
To identify Mars, look for a fat crescent shape to the left of the moon. The yellow-orange color is a further helpful identifier.
Venus and Mars may both be viewable without binoculars or any lenses, according to LiveScience.com.
To the left of Mars, the M35 star cluster of the Gemini Twins constellation will be viewable. The cluster will appear as big as the moon, according to Space.com.
Uranus will be visible, although much trickier than the others to see, to the upper left of Venus. There should be a slight green tint to the planet, according to Space.com.
Next to Uranus, Neptune will be visible. It will be the most distant from the sun, according to Space.com.
A geomagnetic storm unexpectedly caused many throughout the country to see beautiful skies lit up in colors ranging from red to purple to green.
Auroral activity happens when particles from the sun collide with the Earth’s atmosphere and produce photons that emit light.
The last time a geomagnetic storm of this severity happened was in 2017.
A rare major geomagnetic storm lit up the skies with auroras across the country in states from North Carolina to Arizona early Friday morning.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tweeted Friday that a “severe” geomagnetic storm, which is a disturbance in Earth’s magnetic field, began just after midnight, giving many Americans the opportunity to see multi-colored auroras if they were close enough and weather conditions permitted.
Many observers took to Twitter to post photos of the lights display they were seeing.
Storm chaser and nature photographer Peter Forister posted several pictures of the view from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, in which wide parts of the sky appear red and yellow.
Forister told The Washington Post that the storm lasted for more than 12 hours and was almost comparable to the northern lights he saw when he was in Iceland.
Other people who posted photos and videos on Twitter showed images of skies lit up in red, yellow, green, pink and purple.
Auroras form when electrons from the sun collide with the upper parts of the atmosphere, and they can only be seen during nighttime, according to NOAA. They usually can only be seen closer to the arctic region, but the area where they are visible expands for more major storms.
The Post reported that the last time a level four geomagnetic storm occurred was in 2017.
Bill Murtaugh, the program coordinator for NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, told the Post that forecasters were not expecting a storm of that severity, and the conditions that led to it are rare.
Alex Young, a solar physicist for NASA, told the outlet that auroras happen more frequently around the time of equinoxes, and can last for a few weeks leading up to or following them.
Additional minor to moderate auroral activity might happen again this weekend in the northern part of the United States, according to the Post.
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Tokyo (AFP) – The black particles from an asteroid some 300 million kilometres away look unremarkable, like pieces of charcoal, but they hold a component of life itself.
Scientists have discovered the chemical compound uracil, one of the building blocks of RNA, in just 10 milligrammes of material from the asteroid Ryugu, according to new research published on Tuesday.
The finding lends weight to a longstanding theory that life on Earth may have been seeded from outer space when asteroids crashed into our planet carrying fundamental elements.
It is some of the latest research from analysis of 5.4 grams of rocks and dust gathered by the Hayabusa-2 probe from the asteroid Ryugu.
Hayabusa-2 was launched in 2014 and returned to Earth's orbit in late 2020 with a capsule containing the sample from the asteroid.
The precious cargo was divided between international research teams and has already yielded several insights, including that some of life's building blocks, amino acids, may have been formed in space.
The first drop of water discovered in a near-Earth asteroid has also been found among the samples.
The new research, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, went looking for another foundation of life: the nucleobases of RNA.
While DNA, the famed double helix, functions as a genetic blueprint, single-strand RNA is an all-important messenger, converting the instructions contained in DNA for implementation.
Like DNA, it is made up of bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and uracil.
Scientists have previously found some or all of these bases in different asteroids that landed on Earth as meteorites. However, they could not be sure the chemicals came from outer space or were contaminated when they landed.
"Since every meteorite has landed on the surface of the Earth where microorganisms are ubiquitously present everywhere, it always makes the interpretation on the origin of such biologically important molecules in meteorites more complex," said Yasuhiro Oba, associate professor at Hokkaido University and an author of the research.
'Like brewing coffee'
Testing the Ryugu samples was a multi-phase process that began by putting them in hot water, like "brewing coffee or tea", Oba said.
Acid was then applied to extract molecules that were analysed by extremely sensitive tools capable of detecting the minute quantities of uracil present.
The discovery offers "strong evidence that one of the RNA components has been provided to the Earth even before the emergence of life", Oba told AFP.
"We expect it plays a role for prebiotic evolution and possibly the emergence of the first life," he said.
RNA's other bases were not found in the sample, though Oba believes they could be present at levels too low to be detected with the method used to find uracil.
He hopes to analyse new samples collected from space in coming years, including Osiris-REx's material from the asteroid Bennu, expected to arrive this year.
Yoshinori Takano, a scientist at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and author of the Ryugu research, said he was also keenly awaiting the Martian Moons eXploration project, set to launch from Japan next year and return around 2029.
It will collect samples from Phobos, one of the moons of Mars.
"I am sure it will be very hotly watched by organic cosmochemists for the next 10 years," said Takano.
The FASER particle detector, located deep underground at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, was mostly built out of spare parts from other experiments at CERN. Credit: CERN
In a scientific first, a team led by physicists at the University of California, Irvine has detected neutrinos created by a particle collider. The discovery promises to deepen scientists' understanding of the subatomic particles, which were first spotted in 1956 and play a key role in the process that makes stars burn.
The work could also shed light on cosmic neutrinos that travel large distances and collide with the Earth, providing a window on distant parts of the universe.
It's the latest result from the Forward Search Experiment, or FASER, a particle detector designed and built by an international group of physicists and installed at CERN, the European Council for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland. There, FASER detects particles produced by CERN's Large Hadron Collider.
"We've discovered neutrinos from a brand-new source—particle colliders—where you have two beams of particles smash together at extremely high energy," said UC Irvine particle physicist and FASER Collaboration Co-Spokesman Jonathan Feng, who initiated the project, which involves over 80 researchers at UCI and 21 partner institutions.
Brian Petersen, a particle physicist at CERN, announced the results Sunday on behalf of FASER at the 57th Rencontres de Moriond Electroweak Interactions and Unified Theories conference in Italy.
Neutrinos, which were co-discovered nearly 70 years ago by the late UCI physicist and Nobel laureate Frederick Reines, are the most abundant particle in the cosmos and "were very important for establishing the standard model of particle physics," said Jamie Boyd, a particle physicist at CERN and co-spokesman for FASER. "But no neutrino produced at a collider had ever been detected by an experiment."
Since the groundbreaking work of Reines and others like Hank Sobel, UCI professor of physics & astronomy, the majority of neutrinos studied by physicists have been low-energy neutrinos. But the neutrinos detected by FASER are the highest energy ever produced in a lab and are similar to the neutrinos found when deep-space particles trigger dramatic particle showers in our atmosphere.
"They can tell us about deep space in ways we can't learn otherwise," said Boyd. "These very high-energy neutrinos in the LHC are important for understanding really exciting observations in particle astrophysics."
FASER itself is new and unique among particle-detecting experiments. In contrast to other detectors at CERN, such as ATLAS, which stands several stories tall and weighs thousands of tons, FASER is about one ton and fits neatly inside a small side tunnel at CERN. And it took only a few years to design and construct using spare parts from other experiments.
"Neutrinos are the only known particles that the much larger experiments at the Large Hadron Collider are unable to directly detect, so FASER's successful observation means the collider's full physics potential is finally being exploited," said UCI experimental physicist Dave Casper.
Beyond neutrinos, one of FASER's other chief objectives is to help identify the particles that make up dark matter, which physicists think comprises most of the matter in the universe, but which they've never directly observed.
FASER has yet to find signs of dark matter, but with the LHC set to begin a new round of particle collisions in a few months, the detector stands ready to record any that appear.
"We're hoping to see some exciting signals," said Boyd.
Citation: Team first to detect neutrinos made by a particle collider (2023, March 20) retrieved 21 March 2023 from https://ift.tt/uSoXKRh
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Welcome to This Week in Outer Space, where you’ll find a roundup of the best space coverage from Yahoo News and our partners from the past week or so. Last week, we took a deep dive into how NASA intends to spend $27.2 billion next year. This week, we have the latest on one of the items on its wishlist: a “space tug,” a big budget request by the U.S. Space Force, and on Elon Musk’s plan to build a town for SpaceX in Texas. But first, we’ve got some breaking space-fashion news.
Project Launchpad: New space wear for the modern astronaut on the go
On Wednesday, NASA and Axiom Space unveiled the brand new spacesuit that astronauts on the upcoming Artemis III mission will wear when they return to the moon in 2025. Unlike intravehicular spacesuits, which are only worn inside spacecraft and have gone through dozens of iterations, from Yuri Gagarin to SpaceX, these new extravehicular suits, or EVAs, built to survive the vacuum of space, mark the first major ground-up redesign since the 1960s.
A prototype spacesuit displayed Wednesday in Houston. (David J. Phillip/AP)
Now, sure, a lot of the tried and true features of old designs are there — a big, domed helmet, a backpack full of fun gizmos and a bulky fit, to maintain pressurization. The new suit, however, features a ton of new technology and a vastly improved range of motion. While the demo EVAs sport a handsome new black, blue and orange design, the ones that go to the moon will go back to the classic all-white look, because otherwise, solar radiation might cook the astronauts alive.
There are still a few unanswered questions about these new suits — like, have they improved upon the whole bathroom situation? — but at least now we’re now one step closer to being back on the moon.
NASA eyes pricey 'space tug' to clean up our messy orbit
Earth has a bit of a space junk problem. In the decades since Sputnik, thousands of satellites have been shot into low orbit. However, we haven’t figured out a great solution for what to do with them once they stop working or get replaced by newer models — and a lot of the time, they’re just left out there to circle the Earth forever. So as an artificial ring continues to form around the Earth, it not only creates a bit of an eyesore but also poses a massive risk to any future space missions. And soon, NASA is going to have to do something about the biggest piece of space junk yet: the International Space Station.
Included in NASA’s proposed 2024 budget is $180 million for developing a deorbit capability for the ISS by the end of 2030. During a call with reporters on Monday, NASA officials explained that if the budget is approved, the space agency would call on the private sector to come up with a “space tug” concept to lower the orbit of the ISS, so that it can reenter and burn up through Earth’s atmosphere.
NASA had previously suggested using Russia’s Progress cargo spacecraft to deorbit the ISS, and officials said that such an option is still on the table.
“We’re continuing to work with our Russian counterparts on how to deorbit safely with the Progress vehicles,” Kathy Lueders, associate administrator for NASA Space Operations, said during the call. “But we are also developing this U.S. capability as a way to have redundancy and be able to better aid the targeting of the vehicle and the safe return of the vehicle.”
Lueders estimated that the total cost of the space tug would be around $1 billion — a pricey space tug, indeed.
Space Force still exists and would like $30 billion, thank you
As Congress weighs President Biden’s budget proposal, leaders from the U.S. Space Force were summoned to Capitol Hill this week to sing for their supper.
Yes, that Space Force. The one Netflix and Steve Carell made a show about that most people don’t really think about too much. But the war in Ukraine, and the deployment of Starlink satellites to aid the Ukrainian military, may just be the thing to change the narrative for the real-life Space Force “guardians.”
Saltzman outlined three areas that Space Force intends to prioritize: fielding “combat-ready” forces, amplifying the “guardian spirit” and partnering with U.S. allies to fend off an intergalactic challenge from China and Russia.
“Russia and China continue to deploy a range of weapons aimed at U.S. space capabilities,” Saltzman told the panel. “The threats include cyberwarfare activities, electronic attack platforms, directed-energy lasers designed to blind or damage satellite sensors and space-to-space orbital systems that can attack U.S. satellites.”
The budget allocation, he said, would be used primarily to defend the Space Force and the nation from "space-enabled attacks."
Oh, and about that so-called guardian spirit: Last week, the first all-Space Force flight graduated from the U.S. Air Force’s Officer Training School in Alabama. The Montgomery, Ala., Advertiser reported that the 15 guardians who comprised Lima “Lasers” Flight completed the eight-week training course to commission as second lieutenants, and will go on to lead in the newly created service.
James Webb’s latest photoset shows dying star
"NASA Webb telescope captures star on cusp of death."
That was how the Associated Press darkly described the photo released by NASA at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, earlier this week.
A NASA image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope in June 2022 shows the star Wolf-Rayet 124, center, in a rare and fleeting phase, on the cusp of death. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team via AP)
The image, captured in June 2022, showed “gas and dust flung into space by a huge, hot star 15,000 light-years away,” the news service said. “Shimmering in purple like a cherry blossom, the cast-off material once comprised the star's outer layer.”
The Hubble Space Telescope “snapped a shot of the same transitioning star a few decades ago” the AP added, but “it appeared more like a fireball without the delicate details.”
“We’ve never seen it like that before,” Macarena Garcia Marin, a scientist with the European Space Agency, told the AP. “It’s really exciting.”
Elon Musk may be building a town for SpaceX (in Texas, not on Mars)
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX and owner of Twitter is looking to build his own town in Bastrop County, Texas, where employees of SpaceX and the Boring Company, Musk's tunneling and infrastructure company, can live and work.
The newspaper obtained plans for the 110-home, 3,500-acre project, about 35 miles from Austin.
Musk is reportedly planning to name the town Snailbrook, in a reference to the Boring Company's mascot, which he and his employees have described as a "sort of Texas utopia along the Colorado River."
The visionary would not actually live there himself, though. According to the report, a private compound for Musk would probably be located outside the town.
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