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Category: space – Page 3

Astronomers Catch Planets in the Act of Being Born

Astronomers have spotted centimeter-sized “pebbles” swirling around two infant stars 450 light-years away, revealing the raw ingredients of planets already stretching to Neptune-like orbits. Using the UK’s eMERLIN radio array, the PEBBLeS project found these rocky seeds in unprecedented detail, bridging the elusive gap between dusty discs and fully-formed worlds. The discovery hints that systems even larger than our own could be commonplace and sets the stage for the upcoming Square Kilometre Array to map hundreds more planetary nurseries.

A fascinating glimpse into how a solar system like our own is born has been revealed with the detection of planet-forming ‘pebbles’ around two young stars.

These seeds to make new worlds are thought to gradually clump together over time, in much the same way Jupiter was first created 4.5 billion years ago, followed by Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

Levin Λ Friston Λ Fields: “Meta” Hard Problem of Consciousness

Karl Friston, Michael Levin, and Chris Field sit down for an epochal conversation on cognition and consciousness.
Sponsor: Brilliant: https://brilliant.org/TOE for 20% off.

Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal.
Crypto: https://tinyurl.com/cryptoTOE
PayPal: https://tinyurl.com/paypalTOE
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt.
Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-wit…1521758802
Pandora: https://pdora.co/33b9lfP
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e.
Subreddit r/TheoriesOfEverything: https://reddit.com/r/theoriesofeverything.
Merch: https://tinyurl.com/TOEmerch.

CORRECTION:
- Chris Fields emailed me the following: “I referred to Peter Strawson when I meant to refer to his son, Galen Strawson, who has done the work on panpsychism.”

LINKS MENTIONED:
- Curt’s AMA #:3 https://youtu.be/SX9q2D6b5bc.
- Karl Friston #2: https://youtu.be/SWtFU1Lit3M
- Karl Friston #1: https://youtu.be/2v7LBABwZKA
- Michael Levin: https://youtu.be/Z0TNfysTazc.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 Introduction.
00:03:20 Michael Levin answers: “What do you respect about Chris / Karl?“
00:04:45 Chris Fields answers: “What do you respect about Michael / Karl?“
00:05:45 Karl Friston answers: “What do you respect about Chris / Michael?“
00:07:46 Self organization / Autopoiesis / Why does life form?
00:12:11 How does cognition emerge from smaller parts?
00:14:18 Why do we see “things” independent from one another? Why in space / time?
00:18:40 Relationship between cognition and consciousness.
00:22:03 The Meta Hard Problem.
00:30:37 Why is complexity associated with “awareness”?
00:35:56 Is society one large brain, with each person acting as a neuron?
00:44:17 Duality between: Did you act on the world? Or did the world act on you?
00:51:32 Babbling, and becoming a “self“
01:11:22 “300 milliseconds” is a special unit of time for consciousness.
01:15:49 Quantum Babbling.
01:21:49 The difference between “randomness” and “quantum randomness“
01:30:03 The difference between “external” and “internal” are both real and illusory.
01:33:41 Studying consciousness / the self and the concomitant existential dread.
01:48:19 Michael Levin: “Something important goes all the way down“
01:51:12 Science starts with faith.

The first observation of a giant nonlinear Nernst Effect in trilayer graphene

The generation of electricity from heat, also known as thermoelectric energy conversion, has proved to be advantageous for various real-world applications. For instance, it proved useful for the generation of energy during space expeditions and military missions in difficult environments, as well as for the recovery of waste heat produced from industrial plants, power stations or even vehicles.

Unusual Plasma Waves Above Jupiter’s North Pole

A spacecraft observes a new oscillation mode in the low-density plasma.

The Juno space probe has spent the past nine years observing Jupiter and its moons. As the spacecraft’s mission draws to a close, the precession of its orbit has caused its closest approach to the gas giant to shift toward the north pole, enabling it to uncover a surprise: an unusual pattern of plasma waves in the planet’s magnetosphere. Now Robert Lysak of the University of Minnesota and his colleagues describe these waves and propose a mechanism for generating them [1]. Their theory offers a new component to include in planetary magnetosphere models and opens a new plasma regime to further exploration.

According to textbook plasma physics, collective waves of electrons in a plasma called Langmuir waves tend to oscillate parallel to magnetic-field lines at a so-called plasma frequency that’s much greater than the ions’ angular frequency around these field lines, their gyrofrequency. Meanwhile, ions tend to oscillate perpendicular to magnetic-field lines as Alfvén waves, with an upper frequency limit corresponding to the ion gyrofrequency. The waves detected by Juno, however, departed from that paradigm: The Alfven waves’ frequency extended only to the plasma frequency, which was less than the ion gyrofrequency. And the waves’ frequency never exceeded the plasma frequency.

Subaru telescope uncovers ancient ‘fossil’ object in outer Solar System

Far beyond Pluto, icy wanderers known as Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) drift through the vast cosmic depths. Some of them orbit at incredible distances, more than 200 times farther from the Sun than Earth, making them tough to spot, but priceless to study.

These elusive objects may hold secrets to how the Solar System formed, and even hint at the presence of a mysterious Planet Nine lurking in the shadows.

Now, the Subaru Telescope has spotted a new one: a small, distant body that’s helping scientists piece together the puzzle of our solar neighborhood’s past and its still-unfolding future.

This Is What Space Megastructures Would Look Like (Simulation)

What will we build? How will humanity expand and conquer the stars? Embark on this incredible audio-visual journey to find out…

Music:
Intro: ‘Helios’ by Scott Buckley.
Video: ‘Discovery’ by Scott Buckley.
Links:
• ‘Helios’ [Cinematic Orchestra CC-BY] — Sco…
• ‘Discovery’ [Epic Cinematic CC-BY] — Scott…
@ScottBuckley.

Patreon: / stargaze908
TikTok: / stargaze_youtube.
Discord: / discord.
Shorts: / @stargazeshorts.

00:00 — Intro.
00:50 — Dyson Swarm.
01:19 — Dyson Sphere.
02:18 — Supercomputer.
02:51 — Orbital Rings.
03:48 — Terraforming.
05:19 — Ringworld.
06:18 — Cosmic Engineering.

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Galaxy cluster Abell 3558 has a peculiar mini-halo, observations suggest

An international team of astronomers has performed multi-band radio observations of diffuse radio emission in a galaxy cluster known as Abell 3558. As a result, the observational campaign detected that the cluster hosts a peculiar mini-halo. The finding was detailed in a paper published July 10 on the arXiv preprint server.

How a triatomic molecule works off excess energy

A resonance effect can significantly affect how a three-atom molecule cools down when excited, RIKEN physicists have found. The study, published in Physical Review A, highlights the complexity of the relaxation dynamics of even simple molecules.

Small, energetic molecules in a vacuum—such as those in the upper atmosphere or —can either break apart or cool down by releasing their energy through emitting light.

“The energy-dissipation mechanism of molecules via is crucial to understanding the stability of hot, excited molecules,” says Toshiyuki Azuma of the RIKEN Atomic, Molecular & Optical Physics Laboratory. “It’s essential in in dilute environments such as Earth’s .”