science - Posted On:2023-09-24 13:15:00 Source: slashdot

OSIRIS-REx weighs 4,650 pounds (or 2,110 kg). On September 8th of 2016, NASA first launched the spacecraft on its 3.8-billion mile mission to land on an asteroid and retrieve a sample. That sample has just returned. Throughout Sunday morning, NASA tweeted historic updates from the sample's landing site in Utah. "We've spotted the #OSIRISREx capsule on the ground," they announced about 80 minutes ago (including a 23-second video clip). "The parachute has separated, and the helicopters are arriving at the site. We're ready to recover that sample!" UPI notes that the capsule "reached temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit during reentry, so protective masks and gloves are required to handle it," describing its payload as "a 250-gram dust sample." 15 minutes later NASA shared footage of "the first persons to come into contact with this hardware since it was on the other side of the solar system." A recovery team approached the capsule to perform an environmental safety sweep confirming there were no hazardous gas. "The impossible became possible," NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. The Guardian reports he confirmed the capsule "brought something extraordinary — the largest asteroid sample ever received on Earth. "It's going to help scientists investigate planet formation, it's going to improve our understanding of the asteroids that could possibly impact the earth and it will deepen our understanding of the origin of our solar system and its formation." "This mission proves that NASA does big things, things that have inspired us, things that unite us... "The mission continues with incredible science and analysis to come. But I want to thank you all, for everybody that made this Osiris-Rex mission possible." Professor Neil Bowles of the University of Oxford, one of the scientists who will study the sample, told the Guardian that he was excited to see the sample heading to the clean room at Johnson Space Center. "So much new science to come!" And that 4,650-pound spacecraft is still hurtling through space. 20 minutes after delivering its sample, the craft " fired its engines to divert past Earth toward its new mission to asteroid Apophis," NASA reports. The name of its new mission? OSIRIS-APEX. Roughly 1,000 feet wide, Apophis will come within 20,000 miles of Earth — less than one-tenth the distance between Earth and the Moon — in 2029. OSIRIS-APEX is scheduled to enter orbit of Apophis soon after the asteroid's close approach of Earth to see how the encounter affected the asteroid's orbit, spin rate, and surface. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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science - Posted On:2023-09-24 12:45:01 Source: slashdot

OSIRIS-REx weighs 4,650 pounds (or 2,110 kg). On September 8th of 2016, NASA first launched the spacecraft on its 3.8-billion mile mission to land on an asteroid and retrieve a sample. That sample has just returned. Throughout Sunday morning, NASA tweeted historic updates from the sample's landing site in Utah. "We've spotted the #OSIRISREx capsule on the ground," they announced about 80 minutes ago (including a 23-second video clip). "The parachute has separated, and the helicopters are arriving at the site. We're ready to recover that sample!" UPI notes that the capsule "reached temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit during reentry, so protective masks and gloves are required to handle it," describing its payload as "a 250-gram dust sample." 15 minutes later NASA shared footage of "the first persons to come into contact with this hardware since it was on the other side of the solar system." A recovery team approached the capsule to perform an environmental safety sweep confirming there were no hazardous gas. "The impossible became possible," NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. The Guardian reports he confirmed the capsule "brought something extraordinary — the largest asteroid sample ever received on Earth. "It's going to help scientists investigate planet formation, it's going to improve our understanding of the asteroids that could possibly impact the earth and it will deepen our understanding of the origin of our solar system and its formation." "This mission proves that NASA does big things, things that have inspired us, things that unite us... "The mission continues with incredible science and analysis to come. But I want to thank you all, for everybody that made this Osiris-Rex mission possible." Professor Neil Bowles of the University of Oxford, one of the scientists who will study the sample, told the Guardian that he was excited to see the sample heading to the clean room at Johnson Space Center. "So much new science to come!" And that 4,650-pound spacecraft is still hurtling through space. 20 minutes after delivering its sample, the craft " fired its engines to divert past Earth toward its new mission to asteroid Apophis," NASA reports. The name of its new mission? OSIRIS-APEX. Roughly 1,000 feet wide, Apophis will come within 20,000 miles of Earth — less than one-tenth the distance between Earth and the Moon — in 2029. OSIRIS-APEX is scheduled to enter orbit of Apophis soon after the asteroid's close approach of Earth to see how the encounter affected the asteroid's orbit, spin rate, and surface. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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science - Posted On:2023-09-23 15:45:00 Source: slashdot

Since 1999, Slashdot has been covering the annual Ig Nobel prize ceremonies — which honor real scientific research into strange or surprising subjects. "Each winner (or winning team) has done something that makes people LAUGH, then THINK," explains the ceremony web page, promising that "a gaggle of genuine, genuinely bemused Nobel laureates handed the Ig Nobel Prizes to the new Ig Nobel winners." As co-founder Marc Abrahams says on his LinkedIn profile, "All these things celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology." You can watch this year's entire goofy webcast online. (At 50 minutes there's a jaw-droppingly weird music video about running on water...) Slashdot reader Thorfinn.au shares this summary of this year's winning research: CHEMISTRY and GEOLOGY PRIZE [POLAND, UK] — Jan Zalasiewicz, for explaining why many scientists like to lick rocks. LITERATURE PRIZE [FRANCE, UK, MALAYSIA, FINLAND] — Chris Moulin, Nicole Bell, Merita Turunen, Arina Baharin, and Akira O'Connor for studying the sensations people feel when they repeat a single word many, many, many, many, many, many, many times. MECHANICAL ENGINEERING PRIZE [INDIA, CHINA, MALAYSIA, USA] — Te Faye Yap, Zhen Liu, Anoop Rajappan, Trevor Shimokusu, and Daniel Preston, for re-animating dead spiders to use as mechanical gripping tools. PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE [SOUTH KOREA, USA] — Seung-min Park, for inventing the Stanford Toilet a computer vision system for defecation analysis et al. COMMUNICATION PRIZE [ARGENTINA, SPAIN, COLOMBIA, CHILE, CHINA, USA] — Mar�a Jos� Torres-Prioris, Diana L�pez-Barroso, Estela C�mara, Sol Fittipaldi, Lucas Sede�o, Agust�n Ib��ez, Marcelo Berthier, and Adolfo Garc�a, for studying the mental activities of people who are expert at speaking backward. MEDICINE PRIZE [USA, CANADA, MACEDONIA, IRAN, VIETNAM] — Christine Pham, Bobak Hedayati, Kiana Hashemi, Ella Csuka, Tiana Mamaghani, Margit Juhasz, Jamie Wikenheiser, and Natasha Mesinkovska, for using cadavers to explore whether there is an equal number of hairs in each of a person's two nostrils. NUTRITION PRIZE [JAPAN] — Homei Miyashita and Hiromi Nakamura, for experiments to determine how electrified chopsticks and drinking straws can change the taste of food. EDUCATION PRIZE [HONG KONG, CHINA, CANADA, UK, THE NETHERLANDS, IRELAND, USA, JAPAN] — Katy Tam, Cyanea Poon, Victoria Hui, Wijnand van Tilburg, Christy Wong, Vivian Kwong, Gigi Yuen, and Christian Chan, for methodically studying the boredom of teachers and students. PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [USA] — Stanley Milgram, Leonard Bickman, and Lawrence Berkowitz for 1968 experiments on a city street to see how many passersby stop to look upward when they see strangers looking upward. PHYSICS PRIZE [SPAIN, GALICIA, SWITZERLAND, FRANCE, UK] — Bieito Fern�ndez Castro, Marian Pe�a, Enrique Nogueira, Miguel Gilcoto, Esperanza Broull�n, Antonio Comesa�a, Damien Bouffard, Alberto C. Naveira Garabato, and Beatriz Mouri�o-Carballido, for measuring the extent to which ocean-water mixing is affected by the sexual activity of anchovies. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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science - Posted On:2023-09-23 12:45:00 Source: slashdot

"As the sun rose on Friday over the lunar plateau where India's Vikram lander and Pragyan rover sit, the robotic explorers remained silent," writes the New York Times: The Indian Space Research Organization, India's equivalent of NASA, said on Friday that mission controllers on the ground had sent a wake-up message to Vikram. The lander, as expected, did not reply. Efforts will continue over the next few days, but this could well be the conclusion of Chandrayaan-3, India's first successful space mission to the surface of another world... The hope was that when sunlight again warmed the solar panels, the spacecraft would recharge and revive. But that was wishful thinking. Neither Vikram nor Pragyan were designed to survive a long, frigid lunar night when temperatures plunge to more than a hundred degrees below zero, far colder than the electronic components were designed for. The spacecraft designers could have added heaters or used more resilient components, but that would have added cost, weight and complexity... The mission's science observations included a temperature probe deployed from Vikram that pushed into the lunar soil. The probe recorded a sharp drop, from about 120 degrees Fahrenheit at the surface to 10 degrees just three inches down. Lunar soil is a poor conductor of heat. The poor heat conduction could be a boon for future astronauts; an underground outpost would be well-insulated from the enormous temperature swings at the surface. Another instrument on Vikram, a seismometer, detected on Aug. 26 what appeared to be a moonquake... The Pragyan measurement suggests that concentrations of sulfur might be higher in the polar regions. Sulfur is a useful element in technologies like solar cells and batteries, as well as in fertilizer and concrete. Before it went to sleep earlier this month, Vikram made a small final move, firing its engines to rise about 16 inches above the surface before softly landing again. The hop shifted Vikram's position by 12 to 16 inches, ISRO said. "Hoping for a successful awakening for another set of assignments!" ISRO posted on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, on Sept. 2. "Else, it will forever stay there as India's lunar ambassador." "Efforts to establish contact will continue," ISRO tweeted yesterday... Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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science - Posted On:2023-09-23 10:45:00 Source: slashdot

In 2020 Serbian scientists were gifted China's "Fire-Eye" labs, remembers the Washington Post. The sophisticated portable labs "excelled not only at cracking the genetic code for viruses, but also for humans, with machines that can decipher genetic instructions contained within the cells of every person on Earth, according to its Chinese inventors." Although some of them were temporary, "scores" of the portable labs "were donated or sold to foreign countries during the pandemic," reports the Washington Post. But it adds that now those same labs "are attracting the attention of Western intelligence agencies amid growing unease about China's intentions." Some analysts perceive China's largesse as part of a global attempt to tap into new sources of highly valuable human DNA data in countries around the world. That collection effort, underway for more than a decade, has included the acquisition of U.S. genetics companies as well as sophisticated hacking operations, U.S. and Western intelligence officials say. But more recently, it received an unexpected boost from the coronavirus pandemic, which created opportunities for Chinese companies and institutes to distribute gene-sequencing machines and build partnerships for genetic research in places where Beijing previously had little or no access, the officials said. Amid the pandemic, Fire-Eye labs would proliferate quickly, spreading to four continents and more than 20 countries, from Canada and Latvia to Saudi Arabia, and from Ethiopia and South Africa to Australia. Several, like the one in Belgrade, now function as permanent genetic-testing centers... BGI Group, the Shenzhen-based company that makes Fire-Eye labs, said it has no access to genetic information collected by the lab it helped create in Serbia. But U.S. officials note that BGI was picked by Beijing to build and operate the China National GeneBank, a vast and growing government-owned repository that now includes genetic data drawn from millions of people around the world. The Pentagon last year officially listed BGI as one of several "Chinese military companies" operating in the United States, and a 2021 U.S. intelligence assessment linked the company to the Beijing-directed global effort to obtain even more human DNA, including from the United States. The U.S. government also has blacklisted Chinese subsidiaries of BGI for allegedly helping analyze genetic material gathered inside China to assist government crackdowns on the country's ethnic and religious minorities... Beijing's drive to sweep up DNA from across the planet has occasionally stirred controversy, particularly after a 2021 Reuters series about aspects of the project. Chinese academics and military scientists have also attracted attention by debating the feasibility of creating biological weapons that might someday target populations based on their genes. Genetic-based weapons are regarded by experts as a distant prospect, at best, and some of the discussion appears to have been prompted by official paranoia about whether the United States and other countries are exploring such weapons. U.S. intelligence officials believe China's global effort is mostly about beating the West economically, not militarily. There is no public evidence that Chinese companies have used foreign DNA for reasons other than scientific research. China has announced plans to become the world's leader in biotechnology by 2035, and it regards genetic information — sometimes called "the new gold" — as a crucial ingredient in a scientific revolution that could produce thousands of new drugs and cures... U.S. intelligence officials said in interviews that they have limited insight into how BGI handles DNA information acquired overseas, including whether genetic data from the Fire-Eye labs ultimately end up in the computers of China's military or intelligence services... Chinese law makes clear that any information collected using BGI's machines can be accessed by the Chinese government. A national intelligence law enacted in 2017 stipulates that Chinese firms and citizens are legally bound to share proprietary information acquired in foreign countries whenever requested. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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science - Posted On:2023-09-23 01:15:00 Source: slashdot

The prestigious Lasker Awards were given this week to scientists making advances in the diagnosis of eye disease, the prediction of cellular protein structure and the intricacies of the immune system. The awards, closely watched by researchers in biomedical fields, often foreshadow Nobel Prizes. The New York Times adds: The Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award was given to a team of three scientists, led by James G. Fujimoto, a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who helped invent optical coherence tomography. The technology can detect conditions like macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy earlier than previous methods, preventing blindness. O.C.T. now is commonly used in ophthalmology offices, where the patient simply rests a chin and forehead against an instrument for a brief scan. The method, invented in 1991, offers a staggering amount of detail about the retina, a layer of tissue at the back of the eye critical to vision. "It's not much thicker than a strand of hair, but it has 10 internal layers," said Dr. David Huang, an ophthalmologist at the Casey Eye Institute at Oregon Health & Science University who helped to invent the method. Before O.C.T., an ophthalmologist could dilate a patient's eyes with eye drops to enlarge the pupil, and then use a magnifying lens and special light to examine the retina. An O.C.T. scan "can measure the thickness of the retina, the fluid pockets in it and the abnormal blood vessel growth," detecting small lesions that have not yet caused symptoms, Dr. Huang added. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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science - Posted On:2023-09-22 18:15:00 Source: slashdot

NASA, in a press release: Jupiter's moon Europa is one of a handful of worlds in our solar system that could potentially harbor conditions suitable for life. Previous research has shown that beneath its water-ice crust lies a salty ocean of liquid water with a rocky seafloor. However, planetary scientists had not confirmed if that ocean contained the chemicals needed for life, particularly carbon. Astronomers using data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have identified carbon dioxide in a specific region on the icy surface of Europa. Analysis indicates that this carbon likely originated in the subsurface ocean and was not delivered by meteorites or other external sources. Moreover, it was deposited on a geologically recent timescale. This discovery has important implications for the potential habitability of Europa's ocean. "On Earth, life likes chemical diversity -- the more diversity, the better. We're carbon-based life. Understanding the chemistry of Europa's ocean will help us determine whether it's hostile to life as we know it, or if it might be a good place for life," said Geronimo Villanueva of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, lead author of one of two independent papers describing the findings. "We now think that we have observational evidence that the carbon we see on Europa's surface came from the ocean. That's not a trivial thing. Carbon is a biologically essential element," added Samantha Trumbo of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, lead author of the second paper analyzing these data. NASA plans to launch its Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will perform dozens of close flybys of Europa to further investigate whether it could have conditions suitable for life, in October 2024. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Science - Posted On:2023-09-22 08:00:01 Source: arstechnica

Welcome to Edition 6.12 of the Rocket Report! Two of the world's most successful small satellite launchers suffered failures this week. We've seen many small launch companies experience failures on early test flights, but US-based Rocket Lab and China's Galactic Energy have accumulated more flight heritage than most of their competitors. Some might see these failures and use the "space is hard" cliché, but I'll just point to this week as a reminder that rocket launches still aren't routine.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Rocket Lab suffers launch failure. Rocket Lab's string of 20 consecutive successful launches ended Tuesday when the company's Electron rocket failed to deliver a small commercial radar imaging satellite into orbit, Ars reports. The problem occurred on the upper stage of the Electron rocket about two and a half minutes after liftoff from the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. This was the fourth time a Rocket Lab mission has failed in 41 flights. A small commercial radar surveillance satellite from Capella Space was destroyed when the rocket crashed.

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Science - Posted On:2023-09-21 18:30:00 Source: arstechnica

An independent review of NASA's ambitious mission to return about half a kilogram of rocks and soil from the surface of Mars has found that the program is unworkable in its current form.

NASA had been planning to launch the critical elements of its Mars Sample Return mission, or MSR, as soon as 2028, with a total budget for the program of $4.4 billion. The independent review board's report, which was released publicly on Thursday, concludes that both this timeline and budget are wildly unrealistic.

The very earliest the mission could launch from Earth is 2030, and this opportunity would only be possible with a total budget of $8 billion to $11 billion.

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Science - Posted On:2023-09-21 16:45:00 Source: arstechnica

Most coffee lovers typically dump the used grounds from their morning cuppa straight into the trash; those more environmentally inclined might use them for composting. But if you're looking for a truly novel application for coffee grounds, consider using them as a sustainable material for 3D printing, as suggested by a recent paper published in DIS '23: Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference.

“You can make a lot of things with coffee grounds,” said co-author Michael Rivera of the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the ATLAS Institute, who specializes in digital fabrication and human-computer interactions. “And when you don’t want it anymore, you can throw it back into a coffee grinder and use the grounds to print again. Our vision is that you could just pick up a few things at a supermarket and online and get going.”

As 3D printers have moved into more widespread use, it has sparked concerns about environmental sustainability, from the high energy consumption to the thermoplastics used as a printing material—most commonly polylactic acid (PLA). PLA waste usually ends up in a landfill where it can take as long as 1,000 years to decompose, per Rivera. While there have been efforts to recycle PLA in the same way plastic (PET) soda bottles are typically recycled, it's an energy-intensive process that can't be done by the average user at home. Adding biomass fillers (bamboo or hemp fiber, oyster shells, and yes, spent coffee grounds) makes recycling even more labor and energy intensive.

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Science - Posted On:2023-09-21 16:45:00 Source: arstechnica

An independent review of NASA's ambitious mission to return about half a kilogram of rocks and soil from the surface of Mars has found that the program is unworkable in its current form.

NASA had been planning to launch the critical elements of its Mars Sample Return mission, or MSR, as soon as 2028, with a total budget for the program of $4.4 billion. The independent review board's report, which was released publicly on Thursday, concludes that both this timeline and budget are wildly unrealistic.

The very earliest the mission could launch from Earth is 2030, and this opportunity would only be possible with a total budget of $8 billion to $11 billion.

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Science - Posted On:2023-09-21 15:30:00 Source: arstechnica

For a phenomenon that is so deeply engrained in the public consciousness, the scientific evidence regarding what has been called "beer goggles" is surprisingly inconsistent. The term refers to finding people more attractive after drinking alcohol, and there is a wealth of scientific evidence both for and against its existence.

The effect has become a trope in popular culture, with countless shows and movies referencing it. Bart sees Aunt Selma as a beautiful young woman through a pair of Duff beer goggles in The Simpsons, while Mythbusters even tested whether the effect was real (they concluded it was plausible).

The latest study to throw its hat into the ring was published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs by scientists from the University of Pittsburgh and Stanford University. It has added to the pool of evidence that rejects the existence of beer goggles. But what the work found is that alcohol seems to give people “liquid courage,” increasing their willingness to interact with people they find attractive.

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science - Posted On:2023-09-21 03:15:00 Source: slashdot

SpaceX just extended its Falcon 9 rocket-reuse record. Space.com reports: The Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Tuesday at 11:38 p.m. EDT (0338 GMT Sept. 20), carrying 22 of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites toward low Earth orbit (LEO). The rocket's first stage came back to Earth 8.5 minutes after launch, landing on a SpaceX drone ship stationed at sea. It was the 17th liftoff and landing for this Falcon 9's first stage, according to a SpaceX mission description. Those figures are unprecedented; the previous mark was 16, held by two different Falcon 9 boosters. The 22 Starlink satellites, meanwhile, deployed from the Falcon 9's upper stage 62.5 minutes after launch as planned. Tuesday night's liftoff extended another record as well: It was SpaceX's 65th orbital mission of the year. The company's previous mark, 61, was set in 2022. You can watch a recorded video of the launch here. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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science - Posted On:2023-09-20 23:30:00 Source: slashdot

A few months after getting FDA approval for human trials, Neuralink is looking for its first test subjects. The Verge reports: The six-year initial trial, which the Elon Musk-owned company is calling "the PRIME Study," is intended to test Neuralink tech designed to help those with paralysis control devices. The company is looking for people (PDF) with quadriplegia due to vertical spinal cord injury or ALS who are over the age of 22 and have a "consistent and reliable caregiver" to be part of the study. The PRIME Study (which apparently stands for Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface, even though that acronym makes no sense) is set to research three things at once. The first is the N1 implant, Neuralink's brain-computer device. The second is the R1 robot, the surgical robot that actually implants the device. The third is the N1 User App, the software that connects to the N1 and translates brain signals into computer actions. Neuralink says it's planning to test both the safety and efficacy of all three parts of the system. Those who participate in the PRIME Study will first participate in an 18-month study that involves nine visits with researchers. After that, they'll spend at least two hours a week on brain-computer interface research sessions and then do 20 more visits over the next five years. Neuralink doesn't say how many subjects it's looking for or when it plans to begin the study but does say it only plans to compensate "for study-related costs" like travel to and from the study location. (Also not clear: where that location is. Neuralink only says it has received approval from "our first hospital site.") Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Science - Posted On:2023-09-20 19:15:00 Source: arstechnica

A first-of-its-kind commercial spacecraft owned by an in-space manufacturing startup called Varda Space Industries has been in orbit two months longer than originally planned, waiting for government approval to return to Earth with a cache of pharmaceutical specimens.

Varda's satellite launched on June 12 for what was originally supposed to be a month-long mission to demonstrate the company's technology for producing commercial materials, mainly pharmaceuticals, inside a recoverable capsule designed to return the products to Earth for laboratory analysis and eventual commercial exploitation.

However, the recovery of Varda's capsule is on hold after the Federal Aviation Administration and the US Air Force recently declined to give Varda approval to land its spacecraft in a remote part of Utah. TechCrunch first reported the FAA turned down Varda's application for a commercial reentry license.

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Science - Posted On:2023-09-20 17:30:00 Source: arstechnica

Parasites that control and alter the behavior of their hosts are well-known in nature. Most notably, there is a family of zombifying parasitic fungi called Cordyceps—more than 400 different species, each targeting a particular insect species, whether it be ants, dragonflies, cockroaches, aphids, or beetles. In fact, Cordyceps inspired the premise of The Last of Us game and subsequent TV series. And earlier this month we reported on a study of how a parasitic worm (trematode) targets a particular species of marsh-dwelling brown shrimp (amphipod), turning the shrimp an orange hue and altering the host shrimp's behavior.

Then there's the lancet liver fluke, whose complicated life cycle relies on successfully invading successive hosts: snails, ants, and grazing mammals. (Some liver flukes have also been known to infect the occasional unfortunate human.) Scientists at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark have discovered that the way the liver fluke "zombifies" ants to alter their behavior incorporates a kind of "on/off" switch that, in turn, is dependent on temperature. The researcherse described their findings in a recent paper published in the journal Behavioral Ecology.

"Historically, parasites have never really been focused on that much, despite there being scientific sources which say that parasitism is the most widespread life form," said co-author Brian Lund Fredensborg. "This is in part due to the fact that parasites are quite difficult to study. Nevertheless, the hidden world of parasites forms a significant part of biodiversity, and by changing the host's behavior, they can help determine who eats what in nature. That's why they're important for us to understand."

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Science - Posted On:2023-09-20 15:15:00 Source: arstechnica

On the outskirts of the small town of Folschviller in eastern France stand three nondescript sheds. One of these temporary structures has recently become a hive of activity due to a continuous stream of visitors, including scientists, journalists, and the public.

The shed sits above a borehole first drilled in 2006 and houses a gas measurement system called SysMoG, which was originally developed to determine the underground methane concentration. While the device did detect almost pure methane (99 percent) at a depth of 650 meters, probing further down, the borehole resulted in an unexpected and surprising discovery: hydrogen in high concentration. “At 1,100 meters, the concentration of dissolved hydrogen is 14 percent. At 3,000 meters, the estimated concentration could be as high as 90 percent,” Jacques Pironon, director of research at GeoRessources lab at the Université de Lorraine, said.

Based on the estimates of methane resources and the concentration of hydrogen detected so far, scientists have conjectured that the Lorraine region in eastern France, of which Folschviller is a part, could contain 46 million tons of white—or naturally produced—hydrogen. That would make it one of the world’s largest known hydrogen deposits.

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Science - Posted On:2023-09-20 12:30:00 Source: arstechnica

A decade ago, our present renewable energy situation was unimaginable. Most projections had wind and solar as niche players on the electric grid due to their relatively high cost. In the US, the reality is anything but. Combined, wind and solar have now passed coal; throw in hydro, and they've passed nuclear, too. In most areas of the country, they're now far and away the cheapest means to generate electricity; the same holds true for most locations around the world.

Despite the changed economics, most countries have fallen behind on their climate pledges, and fossil fuels aren't being pushed off the grid fast enough to get us back on track. While the entire globe is suffering the consequences of climate change, the factors that are keeping renewables from reaching their full potential vary from country to country. What should we be doing to get past these roadblocks?

Today, I'll be at the United Nations with the chance to get some answers to that question. The UN, as part of its General Assembly meeting, is hosting a series of events called Climate Week, which includes a Sustainable Development Goals Summit. Associated with that will be a series of talks and panels on relevant topics. I'll be hosting one called "Clean Energy Trends to Power the World" that will happen at 2:25 pm Eastern Time.

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Science - Posted On:2023-09-20 11:15:00 Source: arstechnica

Some extinct species left copious fossil remnants of their existence. Ammonites—an extinct type of cephalopod—are one such example. From the Devonian through the Paleocene, wherever ancient seas once covered Earth, one can usually find their coiled shells. So one more exquisitely preserved ammonite isn’t necessarily a big deal.

With the exception, perhaps, of one intact example found in the Posidonienschiefer Formation in Germany, where most ammonite shells are flattened and fragmentary. Now, decades after its original discovery, scientists have taken a more careful look at the well-preserved ammonite and the fossil fish it was seemingly nestled against. What they found surprised them: the fish had actually swallowed the large ammonite—something we’ve never seen before, even in fossils of much larger marine species that we know attempted to feed on ammonites.

It didn’t work out well for the fish. The size of the ammonite may have caused the fish to drown, or it may have blocked its digestive tract, causing internal bleeding. Drifting down to the seafloor, the fish was eventually buried and fossilized, preserving that ammonite—along with information about the ecosystem it and the fish inhabited—for over 170 million years.

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science - Posted On:2023-09-20 03:15:00 Source: slashdot

After manufacturing crystals of an HIV drug in space, the first orbital factory is stuck in orbit after being denied reentry back to Earth due to safety concerns. Gizmodo reports: The U.S. Air Force denied a request from Varda Space Industries to land its in-space manufacturing capsule at a Utah training area, while the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) did not grant the company permission to reenter Earth's atmosphere, leaving its spacecraft hanging as the company scrambles to find a solution, TechCrunch first reported. A spokesperson from the FAA told TechCrunch in an emailed statement that the company's request was not granted at this time "due to the overall safety, risk and impact analysis." Gizmodo reached out to Varda Space to ask which regulatory requirements have not been met, but the company responded with a two-word email that ominously read, "no comment." The California-startup did provide an update on its spacecraft through X (formerly Twitter). "We're pleased to report that our spacecraft is healthy across all systems. It was originally designed for a full year on orbit if needed," Varda Space wrote on X. "We look forward to continuing to collaborate w/ our gov partners to bring our capsule back to Earth as soon as possible." Varda Space Industries launched its first test mission on June 12, "successfully sending a 200-pound (90-kilogram) capsule designed to carry drug research into Earth's orbit," reported CNN. "The experiment, conducted in microgravity by simple onboard machines, aims to test whether it would be possible to manufacture pharmaceuticals in space remotely." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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