Lifeboat Foundation

Giant mountain ranges at least as high as the Himalayas and stretching up to 8,000 kilometers across entire supercontinents played a crucial role in the evolution of early life on Earth, according to a new study by researchers at The Australian National University (ANU).

The researchers tracked the formation of these supermountains throughout Earth’s history using traces of zircon with low lutetium content—a combination of mineral and rare earth element only found in the roots of high mountains where they form under intense pressure.

The study found the most giant of these supermountains only formed twice in Earth’s history—the first between 2,000 and 1,800 million years ago and the second between 650 and 500 million years ago. Both mountain ranges rose during periods of supercontinent formation.

“Beneficial Viruses” For Human Health, Agriculture And Environmental Sustainability — Dr. Marilyn Roossinck, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Penn State

Dr. Marilyn Roossinck Ph.D. (https://plantpath.psu.edu/directory/mjr25) is Professor Emeritus of plant pathology, environmental microbiology and biology at Penn State University.

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About 1.5 million years ago, a child died near the Sea of Galilee. All that remains of the youngster is a single bone, a vertebra. But that skeletal fragment, first unearthed in 1966 and only now recognized for what it actually is – the earliest large-bodied hominin found in the Levant – changes the story of human evolution.

Among other things, that one bone proves for the first time that there were multiple exits by archaic humans from Africa. At 1.5 million years of age, the bone is the second-oldest hominin fossil to be found outside Africa. The oldest date to 1.8 million years ago and were found in Dmanisi, Georgia, and that difference of about 300,000 years proves in and of itself that there was more than one exit.

More? This archaic child in the Jordan Valley and the hominins at Dmanisi were not the same species.

Roughly 13.8 billion years ago, our Universe was born in a massive explosion that gave rise to the first subatomic particles and the laws of physics as we know them. About 370,000 years later, hydrogen had formed, the building block of stars, which fuse hydrogen and helium in their interiors to create all the heavier elements. While hydrogen remains the most pervasive element in the Universe, it can be difficult to detect individual clouds of hydrogen gas in the interstellar medium (ISM).

This makes it difficult to research the early phases of star formation, which would offer clues about the evolution of galaxies and the cosmos. An international team led by astronomers from the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy (MPIA) recently noticed a massive filament of atomic hydrogen gas in our galaxy. This structure, named “Maggie,” is located about 55,000 light-years away (on the other side of the Milky Way) and is one of the longest structures ever observed in our galaxy.

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Most vertical farms are hydroponic (plant roots sit in shallow troughs of nutrient-rich water) or aeroponic (roots dangle in the air and are periodically misted). But Upward Farms uses aquaponics to fertilize its crops. What does that mean? In a nutshell, that plants are fertilized with fish poop.

To get a little more specific: besides microgreens, Upward Farms raises fish: mercury-free, antibiotic-free, hormone-free hybrid striped bass, in tanks that are separate from the trays of greens. Manure from the fish is collected and fed to the plants, making for a soil microbiome that’s more dense, fertile, and productive than that of most indoor farms, according to the company. Best of all, the company sells the fish to consumers, too.

Upward Farms claims its yields are two times above the industry average thanks to its ecological farming method, which keeps the microbial cell count in soil much higher than it would be with chemical fertilizers. “There’s a communication layer that’s been built in by millions of years of evolution between plants and microbes,” said Jason Green, Upward Farms’ CEO and cofounder. “Plants can say, ‘Hey, I’m stressed in this way, my environment is imperfect in this way, can you help me?’ and plants recruit microbes to their service.”

How many black holes are out there in the Universe? This is one of the most relevant and pressing questions in modern astrophysics and cosmology. The intriguing issue has recently been addressed by the SISSA Ph.D. student Alex Sicilia, supervised by Prof. Andrea Lapi and Dr. Lumen Boco, together with other collaborators from SISSA and from other national and international institutions. In a first paper of a series just published in The Astrophysical Journal, the authors have investigated the demographics of stellar mass black holes, which are black holes with masses between a few to some hundred solar masses, that originated at the end of the life of massive stars. According to the new research, a remarkable amount around 1% of the overall ordinary (baryonic) matter of the Universe is locked up in stellar mass black holes. Astonishingly, the researchers have found that the number of black holes within the observable Universe (a sphere of diameter around 90 billions light years) at present time is about 40 trillions, 40 billion billions (i.e., about 40 × 10¹⁸, i.e. 4 followed by 19 zeros!).

A new method to calculate the number of black holes

As the authors of the research explain: This important result has been obtained thanks to an original approach which combines the state-of-the-art stellar and binary evolution code SEVN developed by SISSA researcher Dr. Mario Spera to empirical prescriptions for relevant physical properties of galaxies, especially the rate of star formation, the amount of stellar mass and the metallicity of the interstellar medium (which are all important elements to define the number and the masses of stellar black holes). Exploiting these crucial ingredients in a self-consistent approach, thanks to their new computation approach, the researchers have then derived the number of stellar black holes and their mass distribution across the whole history of the Universe.

“Our results could give us a new perspective on the evolution of the Earth’s dynamics,” said Motohiko Murakami, a corresponding author of the study explained in a press statement. “They suggest that Earth, like the other rocky planets Mercury and Mars, is cooling and becoming inactive much faster than expected.”

The Earth will cool down at an increasingly fast pace

The scientists discovered that bridgmanite was roughly 1.5 times better at conducting heat than previously estimated. This means that heat must transfer more easily from the core to the mantle than had been previously believed. This faster transfer equals a higher cooling rate, meaning the Earth’s core will cool down faster than once thought. What’s more, as it cools bridgmanite turns into a mineral called post-perovskite, which conducts heat at an even faster rate. So the inner Earth could start to cool at an increasingly accelerated rate once bridgmanite starts forming into post-perovskite, a crystal structure following the formula ABX₃.

we individualize our conscious awareness through the filter of our nervous system, our “local” mind, our very inner subjectivity, but consciousness itself, the Self in a greater sense, our “core” self is universal, and knowing it through experience has been called enlightenment, illumination, awakening, or transcendence, through the ages.

Here’s Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind (2021), Part IV: UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS >

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A simple roadside weed may hold the key to understanding and predicting DNA mutation, according to new research from University of California, Davis, and the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Germany.

The findings, published January 12 in the journal Nature, radically change our understanding of evolution and could one day help researchers breed better crops or even help humans fight cancer.

Mutations occur when DNA is damaged and left unrepaired, creating a new variation. The scientists wanted to know if mutation was purely random or something deeper. What they found was unexpected.