STARFORGE, an initiative dedicated to modeling early star formation, has released stunning supercomputer simulations of young protostars.
DNA was personified in Jurassic Park, where the animated double helix that called himself Mr. DNA took you and a group of skeptical scientists through the oversimplified (and obviously fictional) steps to creating dino DNA — but there is some reality in this.
For all you dinosaur enthusiasts out there, synthesizing DNA can’t bring T.Rex and Brachiosaurus back from extinction. Though creating genes in a lab sounds like the original eureka moment of Jurassic Park, synthesizing human DNA has done everything from genetic sequencing and editing to detecting diseases like the current plague we are living through. There is just one step that has always been problematic.
As the Covid-19 vaccine rollout continues in the United States, with people ages 12 and older receiving their shots, vaccine makers are now preparing for a next possible phase: booster doses.
Researchers at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics published a paper last week that just might explain a mysterious gap in planet sizes beyond our solar system. Planets between 1.5 and 2 times Earth’s radius are strikingly rare. This new research suggests that the reason might be because planets slightly larger than this, called mini-Neptunes, lose their atmospheres over time, shrinking to become ‘super-Earths’ only slightly larger than our home planet. These changing planets only briefly have a radius the right size to fill the gap, quickly shrinking beyond it. The implication for planetary science is exciting, as it affirms that planets are not static objects, but evolving and dynamic worlds.
Exoplanet research is a very young field. As recently as 1992, no one had ever seen a planet beyond our solar system. Today, we’ve discovered more than 4700 of them, and that number is growing rapidly due to the efforts of dedicated planet-hunting space telescopes like Kepler (now defunct) and its successor, TESS. We’ve suddenly gained an enormous new sample size of planets to study, beyond the eight planets (sorry Pluto) that orbit around our sun.
Kepler, TESS, and other planet hunters have discovered brand new types of planets, like so-called ‘hot-Jupiters,’ large gas giants that orbit very close to their star. These were among the first exoplanets observed because their large size made them easy to find, and their small, fast orbital periods meant we could see them pass in front of their star more than once in a short period of time (some hot-Jupiters have a year that lasts only a few Earth days).
Exoplanet hunting is difficult, and we are limited by our technology. But Peter Vickers believes we’re also limited by our biases.
Keep watching to look at three of the most fantastic quantum breakthroughs that bring liberation and freedom to the world of science today! Subscribe to Futurity for more videos.
#quantum #quantumcomputing #google.
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It may not look nice, but maybe it can help prevent accidents. 😃
It’s generally good to watch where you’re going while out walking around, but if you’re someone who just can’t resist a glance at your phone – or a full scrolling session – then this industrial design student’s third eye is for you.
Continue reading “Robotic ‘Third Eye’ Lets You Walk Safely While Looking At Your Phone” »
Engineering A Safer World For Humans With Self Driving Cars, Drones, and Robots — Dr. Missy Cummings PhD, Professor, Duke University, Director, Humans and Autonomy Laboratory, Duke Engineering.
Dr. Mary “Missy” Cummings, is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, at the Pratt School of Engineering, at Duke University, the Duke Institute of Brain Sciences, and is the Director of the Humans and Autonomy Laboratory and Duke Robotics.
Researchers from University of Copenhagen have investigated what happened to a specific kind of plasma—the first matter ever to be present—during the first microsecond of Big Bang. Their findings provide a piece of the puzzle to the evolution of the universe, as we know it today.
About 14 billion years ago, our universe changed from being a lot hotter and denser to expanding radically—a process that scientists have named the Big Bang.
And even though we know that this fast expansion created particles, atoms, stars, galaxies and life as we know it today, the details of how it all happened are still unknown.
If you’ve been to your local beach, you may have noticed the wind tossing around litter such as an empty potato chip bag or a plastic straw. These plastics often make their way into the ocean, affecting not only marine life and the environment but also threatening food safety and human health.
Eventually, many of these plastics break down into microscopic sizes, making it hard for scientists to quantify and measure them. Researchers call these incredibly small fragments nanoplastics and microplastics because they are not visible to the naked eye. Now, in a multiorganizational effort led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), researchers are turning to a lower part of the food chain to solve this problem.
The researchers have developed a novel method that uses a filter-feeding marine species to collect these tiny plastics from ocean water. The team published its findings as a proof-of-principle study in the scientific journal Microplastics and Nanoplastics.
