Lifeboat Foundation

Most of Mars appears to be an endless expanse of alien desert, without a river or lake in sight. However, liquid water definitely existed in the planet’s distant past. A new paper has also suggested that it’s also possible small quantities of water still might exist in places that otherwise appear barren.

Before China’s Zhurong (also known as Phoenix) rover went into hibernation mode last May, researchers from the National Astronomical Observatories and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered something unexpected. Zhurong was exploring the Utopia Planitia region, which is near the planet’s equator. No liquid water was thought to exist at those latitudes. Yet when the rover beamed back data from its Multispectral Camera (MSCam), Navigation and Terrain Camera (NaTeCam), and Mars Surface Composition Detector (MarSCoDe), there was possible evidence for liquid water having been present less than half a million years ago.

“[Our findings] suggest [features] associated with the activity of saline water, indicating the existence of water process on the low-latitude region of Mars,” the researchers said in a study recently published in Science Advances.

This breakthrough opens doors to investigating the early universe independent of traditional cosmic background radiation studies.

Unveiling the mysteries of the universe’s earliest moments has always been a tantalizing pursuit for scientists and cosmologists. And now, a team of researchers has made a groundbreaking discovery that promises to shed new light on these enigmatic beginnings.

In a study published in Physical Review Letters on May 2, scientists uncovered a new approach to exploring the dynamics of the early universe using gravitational waves.

The object’s gravity and velocity, the study suggested, would have ignited the gas and left a blazing trail of stars in its wake. This exciting discovery would mark the first observation of a rogue supermassive black hole — objects that are theorized to roam the universe after being ejected from their host galaxy, possibly due to collisions with other black holes.

Now, new research hints at a more mundane explanation.

The new study, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics (opens in new tab), suggests that the weirdly thin streak might simply be a flat galaxy viewed on its edge, like the rim of a plate. Unlike the Milky Way, this supposed galaxy would not have a bulge of stars at its center but would be totally flat — a relatively common type of galaxy called a thin or flat galaxy.

Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, the birthplace of modern astrophysics, announced on May 10 the appointment of Dr. Amy Steele as its new Director of Astronomy and Research.

Coming to Yerkes from the Trottier Space Institute in Montréal, Quebec, Canada, Steele studies the building blocks of planets living around stars like our sun that have reached the final phase of their lives. She will begin her role in June, reporting to Yerkes’ Montgomery Foundation Deputy Director and Head of Science and Education Dr. Amanda Bauer.

“The opportunity to lead the direction of astronomy and research at Yerkes is a dream come true for me as an astronomer,” Steele said. “It is an honor to be able to work alongside an adventurous and passionate team who share the same love for this observatory and communion with the night sky. I am truly excited to collaborate with my colleagues and the Yerkes Future Foundation to inspire astronomers young and old, near and far, to follow their curiosity and chase their dreams.”

Helion Energy has announced that Microsoft will become its first customer, in a deal that aims to supply 50 MW of fusion power by 2028.

Assembled electromagnetic coils that will be used in Helion’s 7th fusion prototype, Polaris. (Photo: Business Wire)

Continue reading “Helion aims for commercial fusion by 2028” »

Researchers have discovered a new generic production mechanism of gravitational waves generated by a phenomenon known as oscillons, which can originate in many cosmological theories from the fragmentation into solitonic “lumps” of the inflaton field that drove the early universe’s rapid expansion, reports a new study published in Physical Review Letters on May 2.

The results have set the stage for revealing exciting novel insights about the universe’s earliest moments.

The inflationary period, which occurred just after the Big Bang, is believed to have caused the universe to expand exponentially. In many cosmological theories, the rapid expansion period is followed by the formation of oscillons.

In 2010 Prof. Shlomo Havlin and collaborators published an article in the journal Nature proposing that the abrupt electricity failure causing the famous 2003 Italy blackout was a consequence of the inter-dependency of two networks. According to Havlin’s theory the dependency between the power network and its communication system led to cascading failures and abrupt collapse. Havlin’s seminal work ignited a new field in statistical physics known as “network of networks” or “interdependent networks” and paved the way for understanding and predicting the effects of the interaction between networks.

The main novelty of Havlin’s model is the existence of two types of links that represent two qualitatively different kinds of interactions. Within networks, links between nodes describe connectivity such as electric power or communication connections. Between networks, on the other hand, links describe dependency relationships in which the functionality of a node in one network depends on the functionality of a node in the other. The communication hubs need electricity and the electric power stations depend on communication control. This dependency leads to a cascading effect in which failure of a single node in one of the networks could lead to an abrupt breakdown of both networks.

Over the past decade or so since, Havlin, from the Department of Physics at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and others have applied this concept to a variety of abstract systems, such as the internet, road traffic, the economy, infrastructure, and more. But being a theorist, Havlin was unable to manifest the hypothesis on real experimental physical systems and thus the theory couldn’t be confirmed in controlled experiments, nor could it be implemented for device-type applications.

I either think this has to do with some unknown physics problem like lack of some sorta gravity on spacetime fabric or it could be piloted by lifeforms as a black hole spaceship. Either way this could be addressed with a laser that could evaporate it back into light for instance a matter into light laser or put it back in place with a stasis field.

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) lurk in the center of large galaxies like ours. From their commanding position in the galaxy’s heart, they feed on gas, dust, stars, and anything else that strays too close, growing more massive as time passes. But in rare circumstances, an SMBH can be forced out of its position and hurtle through space as a rogue SMBH.

In a new paper, researchers from Canada, Australia, and the U.S. present evidence of a rogue SMBH that’s tearing through space and interacting with the circumgalactic medium (CGM.) Along the way, the giant is creating shock waves and triggering star formation.

Continue reading “Astronomers spot a rogue supermassive black hole hurtling through space leaving star formation in its wake” »

Glycans perform varied and crucial functions in numerous cellular activities. The diverse roles of glycans are matched by their highly complex structures, which derive from differences in composition, branching, regio-and stereochemistry, and modification. This incomparable structural diversity is challenging to the structural analysis of glycans.

Recently, a joint research group led by Prof. Qing Guangyan and Prof. Liang Xinmiao from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has developed a glycan identification method based on nanopore single-molecule sensing through a glycan derivatization strategy. The study was published in Nature Communications on March 28.

Identifying and sequencing glycans using nanopore single-molecule techniques has sparked interest; however, it has achieved little progress over the past dozen years. Only a handful of cases that focused on either high molecular weight polysaccharides or some monosaccharides were reported.