GUSTO surpassed the previous record by flying continuously for over 55 days.
A scientific balloon soaring the skies above Antarctica broke the record for the longest flight on February 24.
Category: futurism – Page 271
Researchers offer theoretical description of topological water wave structures
Topological wave structures are wave patterns that exhibit specific topological properties, or in other words, properties that remain unvaried under smooth deformations of a physical system. These structures, such as vortices and skyrmions, have attracted significant attention within the physics research community.
While physicists have carried out extensive studies focusing on topological wave structures in various wave systems, surprisingly their most classical example remains unexplored. These are water waves, oscillations or disturbances that propagate on the surface of water or other fluid.
Researchers at RIKEN recently set out to fill this gap in the literature, by offering a description of various water-wave topological structures. Their paper, published in Physical Review Letters, offers a theoretical framework that could inform future experiments aimed at emulating topological wave phenomena.
Scientists Baffled After Finding 4 Gigantic Mountains Lurking Under the Ocean
A team of scientists on board an exploration vessel off the coast of South America have made a startling discovery: four previously unknown massive underwater mountains, ranging from 5,200 to 8,800 feet tall. The discovery highlights just how little we know about the oceans covering much of our planet. According to recent estimates, more than 80 percent of the ocean has never been mapped, let alone explored.
“The tallest is over one-and-a-half miles in height, and we didn’t really know it was there,” Schmidt Ocean Institute’s Jyotika Virmani — whose team has been studying “seamounts” from on board the vessel Falkor — told New Scientist.
Using sonar equipment, Virmani and team investigated gravity anomalies while sailing down from Costa Rica to Chile. These anomalies are usually the result of a hard-to-discern mass — in this case, entire mountains sticking out of the ocean floor.
This 3,700-Year-Old Tablet Shows The Oldest Known Example of Applied Geometry
Cira 2021: An ancient fragment of clay tablet dating back to 3,700 years ago, during the Old Babylonian period, contains what is now the oldest known example of applied geometry, a mathematician has discovered. That’s more than a millennium prior to the birth of Pythagoras.
And this history-altering artifact, known as Si.427, had just been sitting in a museum in Istanbul for more than 100 years.
“Si.427 dates from the Old Babylonian (OB) period — 1900 to 1,600 BCE,” said mathematician Daniel Mansfield of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia.
Researchers solve mystery of why flying insects gather at artificial light
While a lot of theories have been centred around attraction, the team found that the insects do not steer directly towards the light, but instead turn their dorsum towards the light. In natural light, this tilting helps insects to maintain the proper flight attitude and control. However, the models developed by the researchers showed that dorsal tilting creates the erratic flight paths around artificial light, causing the insects to continuously steer around the light and become trapped in a constant motion.
“It is the idea that short-range light entrapment is not a navigational disruption, but instead subversion of a basic flight stability reflex, predicting that requirements for stable flight can explain this phenomenon,” says Sondhi.
“The most standout result is that artificial lights confuse insects as to which way is up,” Fabian tells Physics World. “On the ground, we find this obvious. In the air, this is a lot more challenging. In-flight accelerations are indistinguishable from acceleration due to gravity. Simply taking the direction of light as being the sky works, even at night. The night has a lot less light, obviously, but the contrast between sky and ground is just as strong. This is a beautiful, robust way to work out which way is up – until we started lighting up the night.”
