Tag: science

Scientists Are Racing to Unearth the Secrets of an Ancient Underwater World

Around 8,000 to 6,000 BCE, the North and Baltic seas … weren’t seas at all. Instead, they were vast plains that were home to ancient human civilizations. But as the curtain drew to a close on the last Ice Age, water levels rose and inundated these low-lying areas, wiping away any trace of prospering civilizations. Well—almost any trace.

The University of Bradford’s Submerged Landscapes Research Centre in the U.K., TNO Geological Survey of the Netherlands, Flanders Marine Institute, and the University of York will soon explore these long-lost civilizations as part of a research collaboration known as SUBNORDICA. One of the ancient lands the project aims to explore is Doggerland, which is thought to have thrived in North Sea region some 8,200 years ago.

“Twenty-thousand years ago, the global sea level was 130 metres lower than at present. With progressive global warming and sea-level rise, unique landscapes, home to human societies for millennia, disappeared,” Vincent Gaffney, leader of the Submerged Landscapes Research Centre, said in a press statement. “We know almost nothing about the people who lived on these great plains. As Europe and the world approaches net zero, development of the coastal shelves is now a strategic priority. SUBNORDICA will use the latest technologies to explore these lands and support sustainable development.”

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Strange Reflective ‘Anomalies’ on the Moon Are a Mystery, Scientists Say

Moon dust has fascinated scientists ever since Neil Armstrong scooped up a vial of the stuff back in 1969. The jagged and statically charged lunar dust provides clues about the moon’s early formation, and tells us about our own geologic history and that of the inner solar system.

Now, planetary scientists have discovered strange “anomalies” in sun-reflecting particles covering meter-wide moon rocks. This research, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Planets, could help scientists understand more about the processes that formed and changed the moon’s crust and created unexplained magnetic anomalies. But, for now at least, the odd rocks and dust particles remain an unsolved mystery.

Researchers came across these extraterrestrial dust bunnies while trawling a catalog of images taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. They used artificial intelligence to go through the more than a million images and narrow rocks of interest down to around 130,000.

“We keep finding unknown objects in this way, such as the anomalous rocks that we are investigating in this new study,” said study co-author Valentin Bickel, from the University of Bern, in a press statement. 

They saw that some rocks around the Reiner K crater—a smaller impact crater near the larger Reiner crater on the western side of the moon—had noticeable dark patches on them. “Normally, lunar dust is very porous and reflects a lot of light back in the direction of illumination,” explained Marcel Hess, an image analyst from the Technische Universität Dortmund. “However, when the dust is compacted, the overall brightness usually increases. This is not the case with the observed dust-covered rocks.”

The team described the rocks’ strange light-reflecting properties using a technique called photometric analysis, which measures how light reflects off objects. 

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MARS ROVER SPOTS MYSTERIOUS POLYGONS HIDDEN BENEATH THE RED PLANET’S SURFACE

Researchers operating China’s Zhurong rover say they have spotted a series of mysterious polygons hidden beneath the planet’s surface, similar to polygons NASA spotted on the surface of Mars in 2012. The newly discovered features, however, were detected more than 35 kilometers beneath the planet’s surface.

While researchers believe that these polygon structures could have formed due to extreme environmental shifts in Mars’ ancient past, their exact nature and formation remain a mystery.

The discovery was initially made during the rover’s one-year mission, which lasted from May 2021 to May 2022, in the Utopia Planitia region. Described by researchers from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences as the largest impact crater in the entire solar system, the researchers behind this mysterious find say that Utopia Planitia “has both experienced and recorded variations of the Martian palaeoclimate.”

By using the rover’s ground penetrating radar, researchers scoured a 1.2-kilometer-wide area for various geological features. As a result, 16 mysterious polygons were spotted below a depth of 35 meters, meaning they were likely formed billions of years in the planet’s past.

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SCIENTISTS SUCCEED IN PRODUCING A DURABLE “TIME CRYSTAL”

Researchers at Germany’s TU Dortmund University report that they have developed an ultra-robust time crystal. Their study, published in Nature Physics, offers new insights into the potential applications and the physics governing time crystals, and offers a new method for keeping them stable. 

Time crystals represent a new phase of matter, first theorized in 2012 by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek. Unlike traditional crystals, which exhibit repeating patterns in space, time crystals display patterns that repeat in time. This means their atomic structures undergo periodic motion even without external energy, defying the traditional laws of thermodynamics that govern equilibrium in most systems.

The importance of the TU Dortmund team’s work lies in its demonstration of an ultra-robust time crystal within a semiconductor material. The time crystal they developed can maintain its periodic oscillations over extensive periods, roughly 40 minutes, which is millions of times longer than previous attempts. 

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Infrared Sensors Can Now Peer Around Corners 

Just because an object is around a corner doesn’t mean it has to be hidden. Non-line-of-sight imaging can peek around corners and spot those objects, but it has so far been limited to a narrow band of frequencies. Now a new sensor can help extend this technique from working with visible light to infrared. This advance could prove help make autonomous vehicles safer, among other potential applications.

Non-line-of-sight imaging relies on the faint signals of light beams that have reflected off of surfaces in order to reconstruct images. The ability to see around corners may prove useful for machine vision—for instance, helping autonomous vehicles foresee hidden dangers to better predict how to respond to them, says Xiaolong Hu, the senior author of the study and a professor at Tianjin University in Tianjin, China. It may also improve endoscopes that help doctors peer inside the body.

The light that non-line-of-sight imaging depends on is typically very dim, and until now, the detectors that were efficient and sensitive enough for non-line-of-sight imaging could only detect either visible or near-infrared light. Moving to longer wavelengths might have several advantages, such as dealing with less interference from sunshine, and the possibility of using lasers that are safe around eyes, Hu says.

Now Hu and his colleagues have for the first time performed non-line-of-sight imaging using 1,560- and 1,997-nanometer infrared wavelengths. “This extension in spectrum paves the way for more practical applications,” Hu says.

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CUTTING-EDGE ANALYSIS OF THE WINCHCOMBE METEORITE CONFIRMS PRESENCE OF LIFE-SUPPORTING ORGANIC COMPOUNDS

German researchers using a cutting-edge, chemical-free detection method have confirmed the presence of organic compounds in the Winchcombe Meteorite, including nitrogen and amino acids. The new findings confirm similar results from a previous analysis of the well-known space rock, although this is the first time such a detection was made without chemical treatments.

“The team of researchers are now the first to demonstrate, to a high degree of precision, the existence of some important nitrogen compounds in this meteorite with amino acids and heterocyclic hydrocarbons – without applying any chemical treatment, and by using a new type of detector design,” a press release announcing the findings explains.

WITNESSES SPOTTED WINCHCOMBE METEORITE FALLING OVER ENGLAND IN 2021

The Winchcombe meteorite gained some level of media attention after it was witnessed by a network of cameras falling from the sky over Winchcombe, England, in February 2021. This allowed researchers to locate it within days, offering those who study space rocks one of the most pristine specimens ever collected.

“Normally, meteorites are tracked down in the cold and hot deserts on Earth, where the dry climate means that they don’t weather very fast, but they do change as a result of humidity,” explained Dr. Christian Vollmer from the Institute of Mineralogy at Münster University. “If a meteorite fall is observed soon after the event and the meteorite is quickly collected, as was the case in Winchcombe, they are important ‘witnesses’ for us regarding the birth of our solar system – which makes them especially interesting for research purposes.”

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Here Come the Cyborgs: Mating AI with Human Brain Cells

If you read and believe headlines, it seems scientists are very close to being able to merge human brains with AI. In mid-December 2023, a Nature Electronics article triggered a flurry of excitement about progress on that transhuman front:

“‘Biocomputer’ combines lab-grown brain tissue with electronic hardware”

“A system that integrates brain cells into a hybrid machine can recognize voices”

“Brainoware: Pioneering AI and Brain Organoid Fusion”

Scientists are trying to inject human brain tissue into artificial networks because AI isn’t working quite as well as we have been led to think. AI uses a horrendous amount of energy do its kind of parallel processing, while the human brain uses about a light bulb’s worth of power to perform similar feats. So, AI designers are looking to cannibalize some parts from humans to make artificial networks work as efficiently as human brains. But let’s put the fact of AI’s shortcomings aside for the moment and examine this new cyborg innovation.

The breakthrough in biocomputing reported by Hongwei Cai et al. in Nature Electronics involves the creation of a brain organoid. That is a ball of artificially-cultured stem cells that have been coaxed into developing into neurons.

The cells are not taken from someone’s brain—which relieves us of certain ethical concerns. But because this lump of neurons does not have any blood vessels, as normal brain tissue does, the organoid cannot survive for long. And so ultimately, the prospect of training organoids on datasets does not seem practical, economically speaking, at present.

But that is not going to stop this research.  The drive to seamlessly integrate biology and technology is strong.  But can it be done?  And why do so many research scientists and funding agencies assume it’s possible?

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“CHIMERA” METAMATERIAL ACHIEVES PREVIOUSLY IMPOSSIBLE MULTI-TERRAIN INVISIBILITY

A new metamaterial that taps into the power of animals who camouflage themselves in nature has achieved the first successful multi-terrain invisibility, making it effectively invisible to visible, microwave, and thermal scanning techniques.

Dubbed Chimera after the multi-faceted monster of Greek mythology, the new material can achieve its previously impossible capabilities in a range of environments, much like the animals who inspired its development, offering significant potential for both scientific and military applications.

MULTI-TERRAIN INVISIBILITY INSPIRED BY UNIQUE CLASS OF ANIMAL

In nature, certain animals have adapted themselves to appear virtually invisible to both predators and prey. The most famous of these is the chameleon, which can adapt its outer appearance to match its environment almost perfectly.

However, the chameleon is not the only poikilotherm lauded for its ability to achieve a form of invisibility to aid its survival. For example, the bearded dragon is noted for its ability to conceal itself thermally by matching the temperature of its environment, while the glass frog can make itself transparent so that predators cannot see it directly.

Now, a team of researchers says they have combined the adaptive ability of all three animals to produce a metamaterial that is effectively invisible across microwave, visible, and infrared spectra to achieve previously impossible multi-terrain invisibility.

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Alzheimer’s transmitted from person to person

Alzheimer’s can be transmitted from person to person, discovered after patients who received human hormones decades ago went on to develop the disease.

Five cases of Alzheimer’s are believed to have been caused by medical treatment given as children.

The new study provides the first examples of Alzheimer’s disease in living people to have been ‘caught’ during a medical procedure.

In these cases, it appears to have been due to doctors administering children with a human growth hormone taken from dead donors.

According to the University College London (UCL) and University College London Hospitals (UCLH) researchers, the findings may have important implications for understanding and treating Alzheimer’s disease.

And although the procedure that led to this transmission was stopped in the 1980s, experts recommend medical procedures should be reviewed to ensure rare cases of Alzheimer’s transmission do not happen in the future.

Alzheimer’s, the most common form of Alzheimer’s, is caused by the build-up of the proteins in the brain, and usually occurs later in adult life with no specific family link. More rarely, it can be an inherited condition that occurs due to a faulty gene.

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CHANCES THAT ODD SOIL SAMPLES COLLECTED AT MARS’ JEZERO CRATER CONTAIN SIGNS OF ANCIENT LIFE JUST INCREASED DRAMATICALLY

A new analysis of subsurface deposit and erosion patterns beneath the dry lakebed in Mars’ Jezero crater indicates the process took place over eons, dramatically improving the chances that soil samples collected at the site by NASA’s Perseverance could contain signs of ancient life.

Although the exact timeline for a joint European Space Agency/NASA mission to retrieve Perseverance’s soil samples has not yet been set, the fact that the lake in Jezero crater had existed across numerous geological phases significantly increases the odds of finding signs of ancient life within those samples.

RESEARCHERS HAVE LONG SUSPECTED DEEP SEDIMENTARY LAYERS LIE BENEATH JEZERO

Over the last few decades, images captured by satellites orbiting Mars have long hinted at the idea of eroded subsurface layers in the region. However, researchers knew that up close analysis by Perseverance’s ground penetrating radar was the only way to confirm those suspicions.

“From orbit, we can see a bunch of different deposits, but we can’t tell for sure if what we’re seeing is their original state or if we’re seeing the conclusion of a long geological story,” said David Paige, a UCLA professor of Earth, planetary and space sciences and first author of the paper detailing the findings. “To tell how these things formed, we need to see below the surface.”

Fortunately, Perseverance’s mission planners included the Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment, or RIMFAX, as one of the seven instruments on board the rover. Like ground penetrating radar used on Earth, the RIFMAX fires radar waves directly into the Mars surface, then reads their reflections as they bounce off different sedimentary layers.

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