What new methods can be developed to explore Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, for future missions? This is what a recent study published in Satellite Na | Space
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Humans have ability to detect objects without touching them
In terms of objects, human touch has typically been understood to be limited to physical touch, where we detect objects through contact with our skin.
However, recent findings in animal have challenged this view. It is known that certain wading birds such as sandpipers and plovers, for example, use a form of ‘remote touch’ to detect prey hidden beneath the sand using their beaks.
Remote touch allows the detection of objects buried under granular materials, such as sand or soil, through subtle mechanical signals transmitted through the material when pressure is applied nearby.
The new study, published in IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL), investigated whether humans share a similar capability to touch objects remotely.
The researchers asked 12 participants to move their fingers gently through sand to locate a hidden cube before physically touching it.
Remarkably, the results revealed a comparable ability to that seen in wading birds, despite humans lacking the specialised beak structures that enable this sense in birds.
By modelling the physical aspects of the remote touch phenomenon, the study found that human hands are remarkably sensitive, detecting the presence of buried objects by perceiving small displacements in the sand surrounding them with 70% precision within the expected detectable range.
Dominican Republic hit with widespread power outage
A rare blackout hit the entire Dominican Republic on Tuesday, snarling traffic and paralyzing businesses in the country of nearly 11 million people.
Officials blamed a failure in the grid’s transmission system, although it wasn’t immediately clear what caused it.
Generation units in San Pedro de Macorís and the Quisqueya Power Plant shut down, triggering a cascade of failures at other transmission and generation plants, according to the Dominican Electricity Transmission Company, a decentralized state agency.
How a scientific mistake from the 1970s derailed Mars exploration
How a scientific mistake derailed Mars exploration for 50 years. What if Viking actually did discover life on Mars? See blog with our link to eLetter in Science at.
(https://bigthink.com/hard-science/how-a-scientific-mistake-f…ploration/)
All blogs and their links also on my website searchforlifeintheuniverse.com
In 1976, NASA’s Viking landers searched for life on Mars. The Viking team announced Mars was lifeless — but the data was ambiguous.
Rubber electronics are first to offer complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor functionality
Researcher Cunjiang Yu and his research team, including several of his former students, have announced a significant milestone in materials and electronics engineering: the creation of what they call “rubbery CMOS,” which provides the same functionality as conventional CMOS (complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor) circuits, but is made from entirely different materials.
The research is published in the journal Science Advances.
The great benefit of rubbery CMOS is that it provides the circuit functionality of conventional CMOS while also being stretchable and deformable.
Earth’s largest modern crater discovered in Southern China
A newly discovered, remarkably well-preserved impact crater is shedding fresh light on how extraterrestrial bodies collide with Earth.
In the journal Matter and Radiation at Extremes, researchers from Shanghai and Guangzhou, China, report the discovery of the Jinlin crater: an impact structure nestled on a hillside and preserved within a thick granite weathering crust.
Located in Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province, China, it is one of only about 200 identified craters worldwide and is very young in geological years. Based on measurements of nearby soil erosion, it likely formed during the early-to-mid Holocene—our current geological epoch, which began at the end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago.
Scientists make significant discovery on bacteria’s resistance to common antibiotics
Dr Andrea Weisse, from the University of Edinburgh’s Schools of Biological Sciences and Informatics, who led the research, highlighted the urgency of the situation.
“Bacteria are clever little things. They have been learning how to dodge our antibiotics, and they are getting better at it all the time,” she said.
“If we don’t find new drugs – or new tricks to outsmart them – we are in trouble. What we are trying to do here is really understand how their defence systems work. Once we see the mechanism clearly, we can figure out smarter ways to beat them and treat infections more effectively.”