discuss Science & Technology news & discussion

[CraigD]

Post and discuss interesting articles & videos about science and technology.

You don't need to be an expert - just interested in the wonders of modern science, technology, and the history of these fields.

Please keep it rational, and post articles from reputable sources.
Try not to editorialise headlines and keep the copy to just a paragraph with a link to the original source. When quoting excerpts from articles, I think the best method is to italicise the copy, and include a link to the source.

Have some fun with your comments and discussions... just keep the sources legitimate.

Other threads:
The Break Room has a number of other popular threads, so there is no need to post material here that is better suited to these other threads:

- Covid19-Coronavirus updates and news
- Conspiracy Thread Free For All
- The *religious* discussion thread

Please enjoy!

 

[Sutruk]

'Potentially hazardous asteroid' to come closest to Earth on Sunday

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/spa...s-asteroid-come-closest-earth-sunday-n1261689

"The 3,000-foot-wide asteroid, the largest expected to come this close to Earth in 2021, will pass safely at an estimated 1.25 million miles away."

"The asteroid, called 2001 FO32, formed at the dawn of our solar system, and it is the largest space rock that is expected to fly by Earth this year, according to NASA. Scientists calculate that the asteroid won't approach this closely again until 2052, offering astronomers a rare chance to observe the prehistoric rock.

None of the asteroids catalogued by NASA that are similar in size are expected to affect Earth for centuries, and the fly-by expected Sunday was no different. The 2001 FO32 was expected to pass by at about 77,000 mph more than a million miles away before it continues on its orbit."

 

[CraigD]

Interesting quote:

“The biggest challenge we face is shifting human consciousness, not saving the planet. The planet doesn’t need saving, we do.”

– Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, rapper, environmentalist, and Indigenous rights activist.

Agree? Disagree?

It's an ambiguous statement. Musicians have a knack for that

Yes the planet will be here for billions of years, but we are at risk of losing the current biodiversity.

It will be very disappointing if we don't make the effort to save what we can.

 

[Cal2]

We need to change human consciousness to save our current environment and climate. The planet? of course it will continue to exist for millions of years, with or more presumably without humans.

Yes the planet will be here for billions of years, but we are at risk of losing the current biodiversity.

It will be very disappointing if we don't make the effort to save what we can.

Good answers.

It's an ambiguous statement. Musicians have a knack for that

Yeah, I still don't understand the meaning of many songs lyrics, even songs I like.

 

[koolishman]

Semi-Transparent Solar Cells Can Power Greenhouses Without Stunting Plant Growth

Greenhouses fitted with semi-transparent solar cells can generate electricity without affecting the growth and health of the plants inside, according to a new study, suggesting we could build energy-neutral greenhouses without harming crops.

The lettuce grown under solar cells showed no major difference in any key measurement, including antioxidants, CO2 absorption, size, and weight. As a bonus, the solar panels helped regulate the temperature of the greenhouse, too.

The solar panels in this case are semi-transparent organic solar cells (or ST-OSCs) rather than the more traditional silicon-based type used in vast solar energy farms. It's hoped that one day the same tech could even be used in the windows of buildings.

Part of the promise of ST-OSCs lies in their flexibility. They can be tuned to absorb different wavelengths of light as required – the wavelengths that plants don't need for photosynthesis, in this particular piece of research.

While one lettuce control group was exposed to the full spectrum of white light, three other groups were grown under different light filters, simulating varying types of ST-OSC absorption and with the ratio of blue light to red light adjusted in each filter.

"Not only did we find no meaningful difference between the control group and the experimental groups, we also didn't find any significant difference between the different filters," says mechanical and aerospace engineer Brendan O'Connor, from North Carolina State University.

 

[koolishman]

New 'Map of Life' Reveals Where Unknown Animals May Still Live on Earth

"Conservative estimates suggest only 13 to 18 percent of all living species may be known at this point, although this number could be as low as 1.5 percent," researchers from Yale University explain in a new study.

"Without inclusion in conservation decision-making and international commitments, these [undiscovered] species and their functions may be forever lost in ignorance."

To address this 'biodiversity shortfall', ecologists Mario Moura and Walter Jetz created a model extrapolating where unknown species of terrestrial vertebrates might likely exist today, based on biological, environmental, and sociological factors associated with the over 32,000 terrestrial vertebrates already known to biologists.

 

[koolishman]

Turns out altruism is for the fish

If you were given the option to eat a delicious meal by yourself, or share that meal with your loved ones, you would need as very good excuse ready if you chose the former. Turns out, fish share a similar inclination to look after each other.

For the first time ever, a research group led by researcher Shun Satoh and Masanori Kohda, professor of the Graduate School of Science, Osaka City University, have shown these altruistic tendencies in fish through a series of prosocial choice tasks (PCT) where they gave male convict cichlid fish two choices: the antisocial option of receiving food for themselves alone and the prosocial option of receiving food for themselves and their partner.

"As a result, it can be said that the convict cichlid fish properly distinguish between paired females, unknown females, and rival males, and change their choices according to the situation", states Dr. Satoh.

 

[koolishman]

LHC machine finds tantalising hints of new physics

Physicists have uncovered a potential flaw in a theory that explains how the building blocks of the Universe behave.

The Standard Model (SM) is the best theory we have to explain the fine-scale workings of the world around us.

But we've known for some time that the SM is a stepping stone to a more complete understanding of the cosmos.

Hints of unexpected behaviour by a sub-atomic particle called the beauty quark could expose cracks in the foundations of this decades-old theory.

The findings emerged from data collected by researchers working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It's a giant machine built in a 27km-long circular tunnel underneath the French-Swiss border. It smashes together beams of proton particles to probe the limits of physics as we know it.

The mystery behaviour by the beauty quark may be the result of an as-yet undiscovered sub-atomic particle that is exerting a force.


But the physicists stress that more analysis and data is needed to confirm the results.

 

[koolishman]

Perfect time to exercise is afternoon

This Is the Perfect Time to Exercise Every Day, Says New Study (msn.com)

According to the study, published in December in the journal Physiological Reports, "exercise training in the afternoon leads to more pronounced metabolic adaptations compared to training in the morning in people who are metabolically compromised or have type-2 diabetes." What's more, the researchers conclude, "afternoon exercise triggered more profound benefits on improving exercise capacity and decreasing body fat content."

The study was conducted by scientists at the Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands, who sought to establish a connection between exercise and diabetes, as well as the timing of that exercise. Ultimately, after comparing the effects of exercise on men who worked out in the morning (8 am to 10 am) to the afternoon (3 pm to 6 pm), the researchers concluded that the PM exercise had a greater effect.

Exercise training elicits superior metabolic effects when performed in the afternoon compared to morning in metabolically compromised humans - Mancilla - 2021 - Physiological Reports - Wiley Online Library

A strong coffee half an hour before exercising increases fat-burning


Scientists from the Department of Physiology of the University of Granada (UGR) have shown that caffeine (about 3 mg/kg, the equivalent of a strong coffee) ingested half an hour before aerobic exercise significantly increases the rate of fat-burning. They also found that if the exercise is performed in the afternoon, the effects of the caffeine are more marked than in the morning.

In their study, published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, the researchers aimed to determine whether caffeine--one of the most commonly-consumed ergogenic substances in the world to improve sports performance--actually does increase oxidation or "burning" of fat during exercise. Despite the fact that its consumption in the form of supplements is very common, the scientific evidence for its beneficial claims is scarce.


"The results of our study showed that acute caffeine ingestion 30 minutes before performing an aerobic exercise test increased maximum fat oxidation during exercise regardless of the time of day," explains Francisco J. Amaro. The existence of a diurnal variation in fat oxidation during exercise was confirmed, the values being higher in the afternoon than in the morning for equal hours of fasting.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-03/uog-asc032221.php

 

[Cal2]

Interesting quote:

“The biggest challenge we face is shifting human consciousness, not saving the planet. The planet doesn’t need saving, we do.”

– Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, rapper, environmentalist, and Indigenous rights activist.

Agree? Disagree?

A bit of an fyi on this. I asked an online friend/advisor what he thought of this quote. Part of his answer, that could help with assessing other such statements in the future:

"The 2 sentence structure is one of those persuasion techniques of language/logic (I forget what it is called) where you link 2 statements. One make sense (true), the other less so but when put together, the are both taken to be true.

So, I don’t agree or disagree with the “whole package”. I agree with some of it. Disagree with other parts."

 

[koolishman]

Ultrasound reads monkey brains, opening new way to control machines with thought

The most advanced mind-controlled devices being tested in humans rely on tiny wires inserted into the brain. Now researchers have paved the way for a less invasive option. They’ve used ultrasound imaging to predict a monkey’s intended eye or hand movements—information that could generate commands for a robotic arm or computer cursor. If the approach can be improved, it may offer people who are paralyzed a new means of controlling prostheses without equipment that penetrates the brain.

“This study will put [ultrasound] on the map as a brain-machine interface technique,” says Stanford University neuroscientist Krishna Shenoy, who was not involved in the new work. “Adding this to the toolkit is spectacular.”

Doctors have long used sound waves with frequencies beyond the range of human hearing to create images of our innards. A device called a transducer sends ultrasonic pings into the body, which bounce back to indicate the boundaries between different tissues and fluids.

To find out, the researchers slotted small ultrasound transducers, roughly the size and shape of a domino, into the skulls of two rhesus macaque monkeys. The device—attached by a wire to a computer—aimed sound waves down into a region of the brain called the posterior parietal cortex, which is involved in planning movements.

The monkeys were trained to focus their eyes on a small dot in the center of a screen while a second dot briefly flashed on the left or right. When the central dot disappeared, the animals moved their eyes to the point where the second dot had recently flashed. In another set of experiments, they reached out and moved a joystick, instead of their eyes, toward that point.

A computer algorithm then translated the ultrasound data into guesses about the monkeys’ intentions. That algorithm could determine when the animals were preparing to move and whether they were planning an eye movement or an arm reach. The scientists could predict whether a movement would be left or right with about 78% accuracy for eye movements and 89% accuracy for reaching, they report today in Neuron.

 

[CraigD]

Interesting quote:

“The biggest challenge we face is shifting human consciousness, not saving the planet. The planet doesn’t need saving, we do.”

– Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, rapper, environmentalist, and Indigenous rights activist.

Agree? Disagree?

So I thought I would look up that quote to get a bit more context as I had no idea who Martinez was other than the information provided above.

Martinez made that statement at the age of 14, and it makes a bit more sense now that I have the surrounding context - the effects of fossil fuels on the indigenous and other marginalized communities - although I am still not comfortable with it coming from someone claiming to be an environmental activist.

It appears that he was born into a family of activists.



Xiuhtezcatl Martinez (born May 9, 2000), also known as Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez, is an American[1] environmental activist and hip hop artist. Martinez is the youth director of Earth Guardians, a worldwide conservation organization.

Martinez has spoken to large crowds about the effects of fossil fuels on the indigenous and other marginalized communities. He has spoken at the United Nations several times, and he gained popularity after delivering a 2015 speech at the United Nations General Assembly in English, Spanish and his native language, Nahuatl.

Martinez is one of 21 plaintiffs involved in Juliana v. United States, a lawsuit filed against the U.S. government for failing to act on climate change.The lawsuit was filed in 2015, and a federal court rejected the government's move to dismiss the case in November 2016. Martinez is also one of seven plaintiffs in the Martinez v. Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission case; that case is a state-level lawsuit similar to Juliana v. United States.

Earth Guradians

Earth Guardians is an environmental activist organization which Martinez's mother, Tamara Roske, founded in 1992 as an accredited high school focusing on environmental issues. Over time, the school morphed into an international environmental conservation organization of which Martinez is the Youth Director. Their mission is to "inspire and train diverse youth to be effective leaders in the environmental, climate and social justice movements. Through the power of art, music, storytelling, civic engagement, and legal action, we’re creating impactful solutions to some of the most critical issues we face as a global community." They work to organize climate strikes, cultivate environmentally focused policy, and encourage individual activism through promoting voting registration. Martinez has worked on projects to control the spreading of coal ash, clean up pesticides in parks, and ban fracking in his state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiuhtezcatl_Martinez

 

[CraigD]

A Star Just Exploded in The Sky, And It Is Easy to Observe

According to reports in The Astronomer's Telegram, a star in the region of the constellation of Cassiopeia has just gone nova, and the glow is still visible in the night sky. If you live in the Northern Hemisphere and have even a basic telescope, you might want to head out and point it in that direction.

A classical nova is not the huge kaboom of a massive star, but an explosion on the surface of a white dwarf with a main-sequence binary companion on a close orbit - generally less than 12 hours. As the two stars whirl around each other, the tiny dense white dwarf siphons hydrogen from its larger, fluffier companion.

This hydrogen ends up in the smaller star's atmosphere, where it is heated up. When the hydrogen gets hot and dense enough, nuclear fusion is triggered on the white dwarf's surface, releasing a tremendous amount of energy that explosively ejects the unburned hydrogen into space.

Unlike a Type Ia supernova, in which the white dwarf explodes, both stars survive and continue their weird relationship, to explode again another day. The nova itself can continue to glow for some days or months.


Read the article:

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-star-just-exploded-near-cassiopeia

 

[CraigD]

Today’s Doodle honors Australian research scientist Dr. David Warren, the inventor of the flight data and voice recording technology commonly known as “the black box”: a virtually indestructible device that has helped save the lives of countless travelers around the globe.

Born on this day on remote Groote Eylandt off the northern coast of Australia, David Warren went on to receive his doctorate in fuels and energy research from London’s Imperial College. After returning to Australia, he embarked on a 31-year career with the Commonwealth’s Aeronautical Research Laboratories in Melbourne.

In 1953, the ARL was tasked with investigating a mysterious crash of the world’s first jet-powered commercial aircraft. Confronted with the difficult task of reconstructing what went wrong, Dr. Warren had an ingenious idea. He envisioned a voice recording device that could capture cockpit conversations in real-time, providing critical insight into what happened before a crash to help prevent the same problems in the future. Facing initial skepticism, Dr. Warren developed an experimental prototype on his own, creating the world’s first “black box” (though his model was actually painted red). The rudimentary device became the first with the capability to store audio in combination with flight instrument data, a monumental breakthrough in aviation technology.

Today, a modern equivalent of Dr. Warren’s invention is mandatory in cockpits worldwide, playing an integral role in the constant improvement of aviation safety standards.

Thank you, Dr. David Warren, for your selfless dedication to making air travel safer for people everywhere!

https://www.google.com/doodles/david-warrens-96th-birthday



Read more:

David Warren: Inventor of 'Βlack Βox' Flight Data Recorder (1985 Interview)

In a 1985 ABC News report, Dr David Warren described his inspiration for the black box flight recorder and a later related invention. The frustration of Warren's encounters with bureaucratic indifference didn't dim his enthusiasm as an inventor: his spark and inspiration come through loud and clear in this footage..


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_recorder

 

[Sutruk]

A bit of an fyi on this. I asked an online friend/advisor what he thought of this quote. Part of his answer, that could help with assessing other such statements in the future:

"The 2 sentence structure is one of those persuasion techniques of language/logic (I forget what it is called) where you link 2 statements. One make sense (true), the other less so but when put together, the are both taken to be true.

So, I don’t agree or disagree with the “whole package”. I agree with some of it. Disagree with other parts."

I agree with what your friend says, but in this case, in my opinion, the two sentences are right

“The biggest challenge we face is shifting human consciousness, not saving the planet. The planet doesn’t need saving, we do.”

We as humans will be in danger of extinction (humans and the current biodiversity) due to climate change and biodiversity ending, not the planet.
What happens is that people usually says "Save the planet" but actually they should say "Save the environment" or "Save the current climate" or "Save our planet's biodiversity".
But the planet, as a planet, will continue to exist for billions of years, as @CraigD has very well said.
In fact our planet will be eaten by the Sun when its internal fuel ends, in around 5 billion years, and it will become a "red giant".
So yes, "The planet doesn’t need saving, we do."

Here's What Happens to the Solar System When the Sun Dies

https://www.discovermagazine.com/th...happens-to-the-solar-system-when-the-sun-dies

"In roughly 5 billion years, the sun will run out of energy and drastically alter the solar system. Oceans will be baked dry. Entire planets will be consumed. And long-icy worlds will finally enjoy their day in the sun.

Our star is powered by nuclear fusion, and it turns hydrogen into helium in a process that converts mass into energy. Once the fuel supply is gone, the sun will start growing dramatically. Its outer layers will expand until they engulf much of the solar system, as it becomes what astronomers call a red giant."

 

[CraigD]

Here's What Happens to the Solar System When the Sun Dies

https://www.discovermagazine.com/th...happens-to-the-solar-system-when-the-sun-dies

"In roughly 5 billion years, the sun will run out of energy and drastically alter the solar system. Oceans will be baked dry. Entire planets will be consumed. And long-icy worlds will finally enjoy their day in the sun.

Our star is powered by nuclear fusion, and it turns hydrogen into helium in a process that converts mass into energy. Once the fuel supply is gone, the sun will start growing dramatically. Its outer layers will expand until they engulf much of the solar system, as it becomes what astronomers call a red giant."

Surprisingly, it looks like a very crispy Mars may survive.

 

[CraigD]

2020's Biggest Breakthroughs in Physics

This year, two teams of physicists made profound progress on ideas that could bring about the next revolution in physics. Another still has identified the source of a longstanding cosmic mystery.

1. Here’s an extremely brief version of the black hole information paradox: Stuff falls into a black hole. Over time — a long, long time — the black hole “evaporates.” What happened to the stuff? According to the rules of gravity, it’s gone, its information lost forever. But according to the rules of quantum mechanics, information can never be lost. Therefore, paradox. This year, a series of tour de force calculations has shown that information must somehow escape — even if how it does so remains a mystery.

2. Levitating trains, lossless power transmission, perfect energy storage: The promise of room-temperature superconductivity has fed many a utopian dream. A team based at the University of Rochester in New York reported that they had created a material based on a lattice of hydrogen atoms that showed evidence of superconductivity at up to about 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit) — about the temperature of a chilly room. The only catch: Superconductivity at this temperature only works if the material is crushed inside a diamond anvil to pressures approaching those of Earth’s core. Utopia will have to wait.

3. A dazzling cosmic strobe has ended an enduring astronomical mystery. Fast radio bursts — blips of distant radio waves that last for mere milliseconds — have eluded explanation since they were first discovered in 2007. Or rather, astronomers had come up with far too many theories to explain what are, for the brief time they’re alight, the most powerful radio sources in the universe. But on a quiet morning in April, a burst “lit up our telescope like a Christmas tree,” said one astronomer. This allowed researchers to trace its source back to a part of the sky where an object had been shooting out X-rays. Astronomers concluded that a highly magnetized neutron star called a magnetar was behind the phenomenon.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantas-year-in-physics-2020-20201223/

 

[CraigD]

 

[Sutruk]

Surprisingly, it looks like a very crispy Mars may survive.

Yes, but it will be too close to the red giant.
In fact, it seems that during the "red giant" state (during up to 1 billion years, before collapsing and becoming a white dwarf) some outer planets could become habitable.

What will happen to the planets when the Sun becomes a red giant?

https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-...-the-planets-when-the-sun-becomes-a-red-giant

"The inner realm’s doomsday will bring a brief new dawn to the outer solar system. Saturn’s moon Titan, the only known satellite with a significant atmosphere, should keep its dense shroud. It could enjoy several hundred million years of potentially habitable conditions with liquid oceans of water-ammonia, simulations show. The environment may even resemble early Earth. Eventually, Pluto and its cousins in the Kuiper Belt — plus Neptune’s moon Triton — could be the most valuable real estate in the solar system. When the Sun turns into a red giant, the temperatures there will be equivalent to those in tropical locales on Earth today, such as Miami Beach, according to Southwest Research Institute astronomer S. Alan Stern."

 

[Sutruk]

Why the Sun Won't Become a Black Hole

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2019/why-the-sun-wont-become-a-black-hole

"Will the Sun become a black hole? No, it's too small for that!"

"The Sun would need to be about 20 times more massive to end its life as a black hole. Stars that are born this size or larger can explode into a supernova at the end of their lifetimes before collapsing back into a black hole, an object with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Some smaller stars are big enough to go supernova, but too small to become black holes — they'll collapse into super-dense structures called neutron stars after exploding as a supernova. But the Sun's not big enough for this fate, either: It has only about one-tenth of the mass needed to eventually become a neutron star.

So what will happen to the Sun? In some 6 billion years it will end up as a white dwarf — a small, dense remnant of a star that glows from leftover heat. The process will start about 5 billion years from now when the Sun begins to run out of fuel.

Like most stars, during the main phase of its lifetime, the Sun creates energy by fusing hydrogen atoms in its core. In about 5 billion years, the Sun will start to run out of hydrogen in its core to fuse, and it will begin to collapse. This will let the Sun start to fuse heavier elements in the core, along with fusing hydrogen in a shell wrapped around the core. When this happens, the Sun's temperature will increase, and the outer layers of the Sun's atmosphere will expand so far out into space that they'll engulf Earth. (This would make Earth uninhabitable for life as we know it — though other factors in planetary evolution might make it uninhabitable before that point.) This is the red giant phase, and it will last about a billion years, before the Sun collapses into a white dwarf."

 

[koolishman]

Vaccination by inhalation

MIT researchers delivered vaccines to lungs directly in mice.

Many viruses infect their hosts through mucosal surfaces such as the lining of the respiratory tract. MIT researchers have now developed a vaccination strategy that can create an army of T cells that are ready and waiting at those surfaces, offering a quicker response to viral invaders.



The researchers showed that they could induce a strong memory T cell response in the lungs of mice by giving them a vaccine modified to bind to a protein naturally present in mucus. This can help ferry the vaccine across mucosal barriers, such as the lining of the lungs.

“In this paper, we specifically focused on T cell responses that would be useful against viruses or cancer, and our idea was to use this protein, albumin, as sort of a Trojan horse to get the vaccine across the mucosal barrier,” says Darrell Irvine, the senior author of the study, who is the Underwood-Prescott Professor with appointments in the departments of Biological Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering; an associate director of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research; and a member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard.

 

[CraigD]

LHC machine finds tantalising hints of new physics

Physicists have uncovered a potential flaw in a theory that explains how the building blocks of the Universe behave.

The Standard Model (SM) is the best theory we have to explain the fine-scale workings of the world around us.

But we've known for some time that the SM is a stepping stone to a more complete understanding of the cosmos.

Hints of unexpected behaviour by a sub-atomic particle called the beauty quark could expose cracks in the foundations of this decades-old theory.

The findings emerged from data collected by researchers working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It's a giant machine built in a 27km-long circular tunnel underneath the French-Swiss border. It smashes together beams of proton particles to probe the limits of physics as we know it.

The mystery behaviour by the beauty quark may be the result of an as-yet undiscovered sub-atomic particle that is exerting a force.


But the physicists stress that more analysis and data is needed to confirm the results.

Wait. "beauty quarks".. there's a new quark?

 

[CraigD]

Three Russian nuclear bomber crew members killed ‘after ejector seat malfunctions’

Three crew members of a Russian nuclear bomber have reportedly been killed after an ejector seat was believed to have been accidentally triggered as the crew prepared for departure.

The incident unfolded on Tuesday ahead of a training flight departing from the Shaykovka military airfield, according to multiple reports, including from Russia’s TASS news agency.

The agency said the incident involved a supersonic Tupolev Tu-22M3 aircraft, a Soviet-era strike bomber developed in the mid-1960s.

The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the incident to The Associated Press, asserting that it the long-range bomber was preparing for a training mission when the aircraft’s ejection system malfunctioned.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-nuclear-bomber-crash-crew-death-b1821066.html

 

[koolishman]

Water Leaking from Mars' Atmosphere: Experts Say it is Due to Changing Seasons and Dust Storms

Two recent studies found that Mars' atmosphere is leaking water into space through swirling Martian storms and the changing of the season.

It is an undeniable fact that water is on Mars. However, it only seems to exists in ice caps at the Red Planet's poles or as gas in its thin atmosphere. Water has been seeping out of Mars for billions of years since it lost the magnetic field that took along with it the planet's water and air. The two recent studies show how much water moves in and out of Mars' atmosphere.

Anna Fedorova, lead researcher at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Science; and Jean-Yves Chaufray, lead author and scientists from the Labaratoire Atmospheres Observations Spatiales, France used data gathered by the ExoMars orbiter of the European Space Agency that began its science mission in 2018 and ESA's Mars Express orbiter to show the rate at which water escaped the Red Planets atmosphere.

The studies aimed to analyze the rate of water leaking from Mars' atmosphere and how it is determined by the changing weather and climate on the Red Planet and its distance from the Sun.

The study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets entitled, "Multi‐Annual Monitoring of the Water Vapor Vertical Distribution on Mars by SPICAM on Mars Express" and research published in the journal Icarus entitled "Study of the hydrogen escape rate at Mars during martian years 28 and 29 from comparisons between SPICAM/Mars express observations and GCM-LMD simulations" explore the mysteries of water leaking from Mars' atmosphere.

Fedorova says in an ESA statement that the planet's atmosphere is the link between space and its surface, which shows that it can tell more about how Mars lost its water.

 

[koolishman]

Why wine tastes better with fatty food.

Tannins interact at molecular level with fat globules in cheeses, meats, and oils.

Wine aficionados know that a well-paired wine enhances the flavors of whatever foods one consumes, while a poorly paired wine does the opposite. And some foods can, in turn, influence the flavors in a wine. Is there any better accompaniment to one's favorite cheeses and/or cured meats than a good bottle of Bordeaux or a California Cabernet? A team of French scientists specifically explored the role of interactions between the tannins in wine and fatty molecules known as lipids in foods to better understand what is happening at the molecular level with such complementary pairings, according to a recent paper published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Of course, taste in wine is highly subjective to the individual; we all have different combinations of taste receptors that influence how we perceive flavors. But some characteristics are quantifiable: bitterness, sweetness, sourness, and the body (or weight) of a wine. That's the basis for the art and science of wine pairings in most fine-dining restaurants. The tannins in wine are polyphenolic compounds responsible for much of the bitterness and astringency in a given wine; they're derived from the skins and stems of the grapes, or as a result of aging in oak barrels. Tannins pair well with proteins and fats, which offset their astringency and bitterness. That's why wines with a heavier tannic component (such as Cabernet Sauvignon or Barolo) go so well with cheeses and charcuterie.


https://arstechnica.com/science/202...s-for-why-wine-goes-so-well-with-fatty-foods/

 

[koolishman]

Interesting quote:

“The biggest challenge we face is shifting human consciousness, not saving the planet. The planet doesn’t need saving, we do.”

– Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, rapper, environmentalist, and Indigenous rights activist.

Agree? Disagree?

I pondered over this for a long time.

Everything has an expiry date. Our planet too has one.

There were multiple ice ages, desertification, water worlds, pole reversals, strange animals, dinosaurs, trees. Everything rose and fell. Still planet is here.

Humans made a recent entry in geological time scale.

It is true that Anthropogenic global warming is a reality and will harm human existence in long term unless we checked it yesterday.

Planet will be here even after humans are gone. May be all the plastic will degrade into chemicals and nature will re-adjust. Then one day planet will be gone too.

Fin.