The ‘fountain of youth’ isn’t locked away in a philosopher’s stone or a mythical body of water, according to new research. In fact, US scientists say the key to slowing aging is hidden within our bodies.
It was announced in new research that: The secret to anti-aging lies in white blood cells known as T cells. The researchers behind the study discovered that these cells can be reprogrammed into senescent cell-killing machines known as CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T cells.
When they tested this treatment on mice, they lost weight, improved their metabolism and glucose tolerance, increased physical activity, and led healthier lives. Moreover, there is no tissue damage or toxicity.
“If you give this to old mice, it rejuvenates them. If you give this to young mice, it slows down the aging process. There are currently no other treatments that can do this.” Corina Amor Vegas is an assistant professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in the United States and one of the authors of the paper.
Researchers call this treatment a “living drug.” That’s because when CAR T cells are genetically modified, they become more aggressive in attacking a group of cells known as senescent cells.
Senescent cells are responsible for many of the conditions and diseases that develop as we age, such as obesity and diabetes. As the years go by, we accumulate more and more of them, and this causes a buildup of harmful inflammation. However, CAR T cells may be able to eliminate them and slow the effects of aging.
This treatment is already approved in the United States to treat blood cancers. But this is the first time scientists have shown that CAR T cells can slow or even reduce the effects of aging.
There are already drugs that can eliminate senescent cells, but these must be taken repeatedly. The effects of CAR T cells, on the other hand, are long-lasting. If he takes one dose when he is young, he will be protected for life.
“With CAR T cells, you could potentially get away with just one treatment. For chronic diseases, this is a big advantage. Think about the patients who need treatment,” said Amor Vegas. If administered intravenously, it will be fine for several years. ”
Scientists will then investigate whether the cells not only make you healthier for the rest of your life, but also help you live longer.
In April 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration resolved the central black hole of the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87 (M 87), known as M87*, the first-ever event horizon-scale black hole. I reported the image. . In a new paper, astronomers present new images of M87* from data collected by the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), the Greenland Telescope, and several other instruments within the EHT. doing. These new images show the shadow of his M87* as predicted by general relativity. Interestingly, the peak brightness of the ring is shifted by about 30 degrees compared to the first image. This is consistent with the theoretical understanding of fluctuations due to turbulent matter around a black hole.
The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration has released new images of M87* from observations taken in April 2018, one year after the first observations in April 2017. The new observations reveal a familiar bright luminescent ring, the same size as the one originally observed. The brightest part of the ring has moved about 30 degrees to the 5 o'clock position compared to the 2017 image. Image credit: EHT Collaboration.
“A fundamental requirement of science is to be able to reproduce results,” says Dr. Keiichi Asada, an astronomer at the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica.
“The confirmation of the ring in a completely new data set is a major milestone for our collaboration and a strong indication that we are observing the shadow of a black hole and the matter orbiting around it. .”
An image of M87* taken in 2018 is strikingly similar to what astronomers saw in 2017.
They see bright rings of the same size, with a dark central area and one side of the ring brighter than the other.
Because M87*'s mass and distance do not increase appreciably over a human lifetime, general relativity predicts that the diameter of the ring will remain the same from year to year.
The diameter stability measured in the 2017-2018 images strongly supports the conclusion that M87* is well described by general relativity.
“One of the remarkable properties of a black hole is that its radius strongly depends on only one quantity: its mass,” said Dr. Nitika Yadrapalli-Yurku, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“M87* is not a material that gains mass rapidly, so according to general relativity, its radius will change little throughout human history. We see our data confirm this prediction. That's very interesting.”
Although the size of the black hole's shadow did not change between 2017 and 2018, the location of the brightest region around the ring changed significantly.
The bright area rotated about 30 degrees counterclockwise and settled in the lower right part of the ring, at about the 5 o'clock position.
Historical observations of M87* with less sensitive arrays and a small number of telescopes also show that the shadow structure changes from year to year, but with low precision.
Although the 2018 EHT array cannot yet observe jets emerging from M87*, the black hole's axis of rotation predicted from the location of the brightest region around the ring is more consistent with the axis of jets seen at other wavelengths. Masu.
“The biggest change is that the brightness peak has moved around the ring, which is actually the first time in 2019 that “This is what we predicted when we announced the results.”
“According to general relativity, the size of the ring should remain approximately constant, but radiation from the turbulent and messy accretion disk around the black hole causes the brightest parts of the ring to move toward a common center. It wobbles around you.”
“The amount of wobble observed over time can be used to test theories about the magnetic field and plasma environment around the black hole.”
of new results appear in the diary astronomy and astrophysics.
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Collaboration with Event Horizon Telescope. 2024. The persistent shadow of M 87's supermassive black hole. I. Observation, Calibration, Imaging, and Analysis. A&A 681, A79; doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/202347932
A new study led by scientists at the University of Göttingen has provided evidence that the first multicellular streptococci probably existed about a billion years ago.
bierenbrodspot other. We sequenced 24 new transcriptomes of Klebsormidiophyceae and combined them with 14 previously published genome and transcriptome datasets. Image credit: Bierenbroodspot other., doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.12.070.
streptococcus is best known as a clade of plants that contains a rich diversity of embryophytes (land plants).
However, next to the embryophytes there is a series of freshwater and terrestrial algae that are responsible for important information on the emergence of key traits in land plants.
this house, Klebsolmidioalgae stand out. Klebsolmydiophytes thrive in diverse environments, from the mundane (ubiquitous on tree bark and rocks) to extreme environments (from the Atacama Desert to Antarctica), display filamentous body surfaces, and can be found on land. They can show remarkable resilience as habitat colonizers.
Currently, the lack of a strong phylogenetic framework for Klebsolmydiophyceae hinders our understanding of the evolutionary history of these important traits.
Dr Tatyana Dariyenko, co-lead author of the study, said: “These small, hardy little creatures have a very high diversity in their morphology and are very good at living in sometimes very harsh environments. “It's really interesting that we're adapting.”
“Our comprehensive sampling aimed to map the global distribution of Klebsolmydiophyceae and highlight its adaptability, ecological importance and hidden diversity.”
“We analyzed the molecular clock based on genetic data calibrated using fossils.”
When delving into the complex evolutionary history of Klebsolmydiophyceae, Dr. Darienko and colleagues faced the challenge of disentangling phylogenetic relationships using traditional markers.
To overcome this, they utilized hundreds of genes obtained from the transcriptomes of 24 isolates from different continents and habitats.
“Our approach, known as phylogenomics, was to reconstruct the evolutionary history by considering whole genomes or large parts of genomes,” said Iker Irisarri, Ph.D., co-senior author of the study. Ta.
“This very powerful method allows us to reconstruct evolutionary relationships with very high precision.”
Researchers have uncovered a new phylogenetic tree for the family Klebsormydiophyceae, revealing that it can be divided into three orders.
“A deep dive into phylogenetic frameworks and our molecular clocks has revealed the ancient ancestor of Klebsormydiophyceae, a multicellular entity that flourished millions of years ago. Its descendants began to diverge into three distinct branches more than 800 million years ago,” said co-lead author Maaike Bierenbroodspot.
Scientists are investigating the evolutionary history of multicellularity within streptococci.
They discovered that the ancient common ancestor of land plants, other chain algae, and Klebsormydiophyceae was already multicellular.
“This discovery reveals the genetic potential of multicellularity among streptococci and shows that the origins of this important trait date back almost a billion years,” said co-author Jan de Vries. the professor said.
of study It was published in the magazine current biology.
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Maike J. Bielenbrodspot other. Phylogenomic insights into the first multicellular streptococci. current biology, published online on January 19, 2024. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.12.070
People with type 2 diabetes who lose weight while participating in clinical trials appear to be significantly more likely to have their symptoms reversed than those who lose weight outside of such studies.
Treatments such as insulin injections can help people with type 2 diabetes maintain healthy blood sugar levels. However, if you are overweight or obese, your symptoms may improve when you lose weight.
In fact, less than 10 percent of people with type 2 diabetes who lose weight outside of these trials actually lose weight, even when followed for several years. Wu Hongjian At the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In exams, this number can be closer to 90%.
These discrepancies may be due to sometimes different definitions of what it means to reverse type 2 diabetes, as well as the support and different interventions that often accompany participation in clinical trials. he says.
To better understand this, Dr. Wu and colleagues looked at more than 37,000 people in Hong Kong aged 18 to 75 who were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes between 2000 and 2017, about half of whom were women. ) was studied.
Each participant was followed for an average of just under eight years, and the researchers looked at how their weight changed in the year after diagnosis and whether their symptoms improved during the study period.
The researchers measured glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels, which reflect the participants’ blood sugar status over several months. To reverse type 2 diabetes, also called remission, Generally defined as an HbA1c of less than 6.5 percent. When measured at least 3 months after stopping treatment. The researchers were investigating whether these levels occurred during her two consecutive tests conducted six months apart.
The research team only measured the participants’ weight one year after diagnosis, at which point 2% were in remission and half had gained weight, Wu said.
By the end of the study, 6% were in remission at some point, Wu said. About two-thirds of these people needed diabetes medication to get their symptoms back under control within three years.
However, by simply recording participants’ weight one year after diagnosis, the researchers were not able to determine whether the participants continued to gain weight or whether other factors, such as gaining weight at a particular time, could account for some of the weight. We do not know whether it brought participants out of remission. Fat that accumulates around the waist and certain internal organs.
In contrast, one small clinical trial found that up to 86% of type 2 diabetics who lost at least 15 kg went into remission within 1 year. People participating in such studies often benefit from professional dietary management, physical exercise programs, moral support, regular monitoring, feedback, reminders and encouragement, Wu says.
But even people who participate in the control groups of some clinical trials and don’t undergo intensive weight loss programs have higher remission rates than what was seen in Wu’s team’s study.
That may be because, outside of clinical trials, doctors are often reluctant to advise patients with type 2 diabetes to stop treatment, he says. This likely also has to do with differences in how remission is defined, Wu said, since trials often require only one HbA1c measurement in a healthy patient.
Use of Mid-infrared measuring instrument With (MIRI) aboard the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have captured stunning images of N79, a region of interstellar ionized hydrogen in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
This Hubble image shows star-forming region N79 located 163,000 light-years away in the constellation Sera. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Webb / M. Meixner.
N79 is a massive star-forming complex spanning about 1,630 light-years in the generally unexplored southwestern region of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring dwarf galaxy about 163,000 light-years from us.
This region is usually considered a younger version of the 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula.
N79 has a star formation efficiency more than twice that of Doradas 30 over the past 500,000 years.
This particular image centers on one of three giant molecular cloud complexes called N79 South (S1 for short).
The distinctive “starburst” pattern surrounding this bright object is a series of diffraction spikes.
“All telescopes that use mirrors to collect light, like Webb, have this form of artifact resulting from the design of the telescope,” Webb astronomers said.
“For Webb, the six largest starburst spikes appear due to the hexagonal symmetry of Webb's 18 primary mirror segments.”
“Such patterns are only noticeable around very bright and compact objects, where all the light comes from the same place.”
“Most galaxies appear very small to our eyes, but we don't see this pattern because they are dimmer and more spread out than a single star.”
“At the longer wavelengths of light captured by MIRI, Webb's view of N79 shows glowing gas and dust in the region.”
“This is because mid-infrared light can reveal what's going on deep within the cloud (whereas shorter wavelength light is absorbed or scattered by dust particles within the nebula). Still embedded Some protostars also appear in this region.”
Star-forming regions such as N79 are of interest to astronomers because their chemical composition is similar to that of giant star-forming regions observed in the early universe.
“The star-forming regions of our Milky Way galaxy are not producing stars at the same ferocious rate as N79 and have a different chemical composition,” the astronomers said.
“Webb now offers us the opportunity to compare and contrast observations of star formation in N79 with deep telescopic observations of distant galaxies in the early universe.”
“These observations of N79 are part of the Webb program to study the evolution of circumstellar disks and envelopes of forming stars over a wide range of masses and at different evolutionary stages.”
“Webb's sensitivity allows us to detect for the first time disks of planet-forming dust around stars of the same mass as the Sun at distances in the Large Magellanic Cloud.”
Most animals see the world differently than humans, and now it's a little easier to see through their eyes. Using two cameras and some software, the system can create videos that show people what a scene looks like to different species.
“We went outside to photograph birds in the trees, and only then did the brightness of the ultraviolet-colored sky sink in,” he says. Bella Vasas at Queen Mary University of London. “The color of the sky for most animals is different from the color of the sky for us.”
Vasas and colleagues used two commercial cameras housed in 3D-printed cases to record video in both visible and ultraviolet light. They then ran that footage through the software they developed to estimate the wavelengths of light that a particular animal sees with the naked eye. The program processes video frames to reflect the perspective of a particular animal.
The results include a colorful video showing a bee watching a caterpillar reveal hidden body parts to fight off predators, and a close-up of a jumping spider. The camera system works best within 2 meters (6 feet) of the animal, which is not moving so fast that the camera loses focus. Daniel Hanley Co-authored by researchers at George Mason University in Virginia. He says the method works on many insects, spiders, lizards, turtles, birds and mammals.
The “gold standard” for this type of research, he said, is hyperspectral imaging, a technique that can capture uniform wavelengths of light across the visible and ultraviolet spectrum. Jolyon Troscianko at the University of Exeter, UK. But while such equipment costs him more than $20,000, a new camera system costs only a few thousand dollars. This could allow it to be used more widely for photographing moving, life-like animal exhibits. “Imagine a bird of paradise that shows color instantly,” he says.
WASHINGTON – Atomic scientists on Tuesday pushed the “Doomsday Clock” closer to midnight than ever before, warning Russia's nuclear weapons actions amid the invasion of Ukraine, nuclear-armed Israel's war in Gaza, and worsening climate change on a global scale. cited as a factor causing the crisis. A disaster.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, as it did last year, set the clock to 90 seconds to midnight, the theoretical extinction point. Scientists set the clock based on “existential” risks to the planet and its people, such as nuclear threats, climate change, and disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence and new biotechnologies.
“Conflict hotspots around the world threaten nuclear escalation, climate change is already causing death and destruction,” Rachel Bronson, the magazine's president and CEO, told Reuters. “Disruptive technologies such as AI and biological research are advancing faster than safeguards.” He added that the fact that there is no change from the previous year “does not indicate that the world is stable.”
A staff member shows the position of the minute hand of the “Doomsday Clock” in Washington, DC, on January 23, 2024. Jacqueline Martin/Associated Press
The Chicago-based nonprofit created the clock in 1947 to warn the public of how close humanity was to global destruction.
Russian massive invasion of Ukraine is set to celebrate its second anniversary next month, and tensions with the West have escalated to the most dangerous levels since the Cold War.
“A permanent end to Russia’s war in Ukraine seems far away, and the possibility that Russia will use nuclear weapons in that conflict remains serious. Over the past year, Russia has sent a number of alarming nuclear signals. '' Bronson said.
Bronson quoted the Russians President Vladimir Putin To be determined in February 2023 Suspend Russia's participation In the New START Treaty with the United States, which limits both countries' strategic nuclear weapons. The United States and Russia possess nearly 90% of the world's nuclear warheads, enough to destroy the Earth multiple times.
Bronson also referenced President Putin's March 2023 announcement regarding Russia's weapons deployment. tactical nuclear weapons Belarusian and Russian parliaments pass laws in October 2023 withdraw ratification A global treaty banning nuclear weapons testing. Russian analyst Sergei Karaganov also spoke last year about the need to threaten nuclear strikes in Europe to intimidate and “calm down” Moscow's enemies.
Israel has so far at war with Hamas According to an Israeli tally, about 1,200 people have been killed since the Gaza-based Palestinian Islamic extremist group launched attacks in southern Israel in October 2023. More than 25,000 people have been killed in the Israeli military offensive, according to Gaza health authorities.
“As a nuclear-armed state, Israel's actions are clearly relevant to the Doomsday debate. Of particular concern is the possibility of a broader escalation of conflict in the region, leading to larger conventional wars and more “It could draw in nuclear or near-nuclear states,” Bronson said.
When watches were first made, the greatest danger came from nuclear weapons. climate change It was first considered as a factor in 2007.
“The world in 2023 has been hit by a major disaster and has entered uncharted territory. hottest year on record And global greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise,” Bronson said. “Global and North Atlantic sea surface temperatures both broke records, and Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest daily area since the advent of satellite data.”
Bronson said 2023 was also a record year for clean energy, with $1.7 trillion in new investment. But this was offset by nearly $1 trillion in fossil fuel investments, Bronson added.
“This shows that current efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while promising, are far from sufficient to avoid the dangerous human and economic impacts of climate change, and that Changes disproportionately affect the world's poorest people,” Bronson said.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by scientists such as Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer. It relies on a panel of experts in nuclear technology and climate science to set the clock each year. This watch was first introduced during the Cold War tensions following World War II.
Few life milestones are less glamorous and ritualistic than the arrival of middle age. Our skin becomes visibly looser, we get more gray hair, and of course our clothes usually start to feel a little tighter, especially around the waist.
The last one is known as the midlife spread, and it's a commonly accepted idea that as we get older, we start to gain weight around our abdomen. This extra weight is said to be easier to gain and less stable than when we were younger, and it is thought that our active metabolism may slow down as we age. You can no longer get away with consuming this much, and your efforts to get rid of your stomach through diet and exercise will become a losing battle.
So far so miserable. However, in July last year, A study of more than 6,000 people around the world quickly debunked this idea.. It showed that our metabolism remains remarkably stable as we age, at least until our 60s. “From age 20 to age 60, the amount of calories you burn per day is about the same,” says Herman Pontzer of Duke University in North Carolina. “It turns out we have a much lower ability to control our metabolism than we thought.” This will be welcome news for those approaching the age of 45 (usually defined as those between 45 and 65) and facing a frightening epidemic. But that leaves a burning question: If metabolism isn't to blame, what is? And what can you do?
There are TikTok hashtags with millions of followers, endless columns about celebrity waistlines, and a flurry of media coverage when test results come out. It is rare for a new drug to receive so much attention. However, it is even more rare for approved drugs to cause safe and rapid weight loss with minimal effort.
A year ago, most people had never heard of semaglutide. Semaglutide is a drug developed about 10 years ago under the brand name Ozempic to treat type 2 diabetes. It was later approved as a weight loss aid in the US in 2021 under the name Wegovy. With this drug, people can lose a whopping 15% of their body weight.
The impact of this new class of medicines could be unprecedented and could end the world's growing obesity epidemic. “I don’t think it’s fully sunk in yet,” he says. Jonathan Campbell At Duke University in North Carolina, he studies how these drugs affect the body.
First, Wegovy was just the beginning. The next generation of these drugs is in development and will be cheaper, easier to use, and, importantly, even more powerful. Additionally, new evidence suggests that Wegovy and its similar products are more effective when given at a younger age, so doctors are considering their use in teenagers and young children. This increases the possibility of switching from obesity treatment to prevention. “Over the past 40 years, we have seen the obesity landscape change dramatically,” Campbell says. “Now we may be at a tipping point where that goes backwards.”
Why is obesity on the rise?
The rise in obesity has been occurring since the 1970s…
We have all experienced vomiting at some stage in our lives. Whether it’s due to a nasty bout of food poisoning or the well-known norovirus that infects the population episodically. And we can all agree that it’s scary.
But imagine what it would do to you physically, mentally, and emotionally if you were to expect constant nausea and vomiting at a critical stage in your life.this is the reality for them 4 in 5 women experience nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. Even mild cases can cause unpleasant symptoms such as nausea, loss of appetite, and vomiting.
According to the Office for National Statistics, in 2022 this will result in: 20,000 women hospitalized.
But until recently, little was known about the causes of nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the more nausea and vomiting you have, the healthier your pregnancy, and even suggests that it is related to the number of babies you have.
However, real-world evidence shows this is not true. In fact, nausea and vomiting can vary widely in severity and pattern during pregnancy.
Often referred to as “morning sickness,” nausea and vomiting during pregnancy can occur at any time of the day or night. Usually it’s worse for the first 12 weeks, then it calms down. However, for many women, it lasts throughout the pregnancy.
Read more about women’s health:
However, after more than 20 years of research in this field, a breakthrough has been made that identifies a causal relationship. This was promoted by Dr. Malena Fezo, a geneticist at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.
Fezo was inspired to pursue this career after suffering from severe nausea and vomiting during her second pregnancy in 1999. She was unable to eat or drink without vomiting, and she rapidly lost weight and became so weak that she could no longer stand or walk.
However, doctors were skeptical that she might be exaggerating her symptoms to get attention. Fezo was eventually hospitalized and she miscarried at 15 weeks.
Fezo will conduct genetic research on previously pregnant women in collaboration with 23andMe, a private company that allows individuals to send samples of their DNA to determine health status and insights into their ancestry. did.
She identified a link with a woman who suffered from severe nausea and vomiting during pregnancy (requiring an intravenous fluid). and a variant of the gene encoding a protein named GDF15, a hormone that acts on the brain stem.
This association pinpointed the need for further research to understand the role of GDF15 protein in pregnancy.
GDF15 is secreted by the placenta during the first two trimesters of pregnancy. It also likely plays a role in preventing the mother from biologically rejecting the baby, which is essential to allowing the pregnancy to continue. However, GDF15 has been shown to regulate physiological body weight and appetite through the brain. This substance is produced in excess in cancer patients who suffer from severe appetite and weight loss.
In addition to previous research, research led by Fejzo and the University of Cambridge Professor Stephen O'Rahilly We found that the level of GDF15 was high. Seen in women with severe nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. However, the effects of this hormone appear to depend on the woman's susceptibility and her exposure to GDF15 before pregnancy. Women who received higher levels of exposure before pregnancy had higher levels of the GDF15 hormone but did not have symptoms of nausea or vomiting.
It has been hypothesized that long-term exposure to GDF15 before pregnancy may have a protective effect and reduce a woman’s sensitivity to the hormonal surge caused by fetal development.
This exposure relationship is very unique and provides more understanding and knowledge as well as the potential that women may be desensitized by increasing their exposure to hormones before pregnancy. It also suggests possible treatments. Just like some people treat food allergies with controlled exposure therapy.
Many of the common symptoms affecting women, such as nausea and vomiting during pregnancy, are poorly understood despite their very high incidence. Women’s healthcare is not a niche, and there is much to understand and learn through this type of research.
Although water striders are small insects, they have an amazing ability to withstand the impact of raindrops that are tens of times heavier than themselves. Slow-motion video of being crushed by water reveals tricks to avoid being crushed by water, including how to ride a water jet, shoot into the air and somersault before landing. There is.
As their name suggests, water striders can be found walking along the surface of ponds, lakes, and rivers around the world. They have long legs covered in microscopic hairs that trap air and help the insect float in water.
“One day I saw them skating by the water and thought, ‘What do they do when it rains?'” andrew dickerson at the University of Tennessee. The weight of a raindrop is more than 40 times that of an adult water strider. “How do they survive? Submerged or thrown into the air?” he added.
To investigate, Dickerson and his colleagues placed several water striders in a glass aquarium filled with water, applied droplets of water, and recorded the creatures’ reactions on slow-motion video.
The researchers noticed that when raindrops hit insects on the water’s surface, the insects initially remained unharmed because of their low density. However, it was dragged into the resulting impact crater. The crater’s collapse then spewed out a stream of water that returned to the surface, taking the insects with it.
In a few cases, the researchers witnessed water striders jumping from the water jets before they returned to the surface. “It was so beautiful. You could see it do backflips out of that jet,” Dickerson says.
However, if the water strider cannot escape from the jet of water, it will be sucked back down. Luckily, their hairy, water-repellent feet allowed them to float and swim back to the surface.
“This is the equivalent of them surviving when we get hit by a car, and in some cases going through a very acrobatic journey in the process,” Dickerson said. .
The gliding-winged reptile called Queneosaurus lived in what is now the Mendip Hills in Somerset, England, during the Triassic period, about 210 million years ago.
Queneosaurus Although they resembled lizards, they were more closely related to crocodiles and dinosaur ancestors.
It was a small animal that could fit in the palm of your hand.
There were two species: Queneosaurus latus and Queneosuchus latissimus.
One had broad wings, the other short wings, made of a layer of skin stretched over elongated transverse ribs, which allowed it to swoop from tree to tree.
Like a modern flying lizard draco Hailing from Southeast Asia, they are likely to roam the ground or climb trees in search of insect prey.
When startled or when they saw a tasty insect flying by, they could fly into the air and land safely 10 meters away.
The discovery was made by Mike Cawthorn, a student at the University of Bristol, and his colleagues.
The authors examined a large number of reptile fossils taken from three limestone quarries: Enborough, Butscombe and Highcroft. These quarries were located on the largest subtropical island at the time, Mendip Paleo Island.
In addition to Queneosaurus latus and Queneosuchus latissimusthey recorded the existence of Trilophosaurus, a reptile with complex teeth. Variodence and aquatic life Pachystropheus It probably lived a bit like modern otters, eating shrimp and small fish.
These creatures fell or their bones were washed away into caves and limestone cracks.
“The beasts were all small. We were hoping to find dinosaur bones or even isolated teeth, but in fact we found everything but dinosaurs,” Cawthorn said.
“The collections I studied were created in the 1940s and 1950s, when the quarries were still active, and paleontologists could visit to see fresh rock surfaces and talk to the quarrymen. is completed.”
Professor Mike Benton, from the University of Bristol, said: “It took a huge amount of effort to identify the fossil bones, most of which were separate and not part of the skeleton.”
“But we have a lot of comparative material and Mike Cawthorn was able to compare the isolated jaw and other bones with more complete specimens from other sites around Bristol.”
“He showed that the ancient Mendip islands, some 30km long, stretching from Frome in the east to Weston-super-Mare in the west, were home to a wide variety of small reptiles that fed on plants and insects.”
“He didn’t find any dinosaur bones, but dinosaur bones have been found elsewhere in the same geological period around Bristol, so dinosaur bones may have been there.”
During the Late Triassic period, 200 million years ago, the area around Bristol was an archipelago of small islands in a warm subtropical sea.
“These bones were collected in the 1940s and 1950s by some of the great fossil finders, including Tom Fry, an amateur collector at the University of Bristol, who often cycled to the quarry and picked up heavy stones. “They came home with bags of stuff,” said Dr David from the University of Bristol. white side.
“Other collectors were Walter Kuehne, a talented German researcher who was imprisoned in Britain during World War II, and Pamela L. Robinson of University College London.”
“They donated the specimens to the Natural History Museum in London and the Geology Collection at the University of Bristol.”
team's paper Published in Proceedings of the Association of Geologists.
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Michael Cawthorn other. A modern Triassic terrestrial microvertebrate assemblage from caves at Emborough Quarry, Batscombe Quarry and Hycroft Quarry on the Old Islands of Mendip, south-west England. Proceedings of the Association of Geologists, published online on January 20, 2024. doi: 10.1016/j.pgeola.2023.12.003
The Amazon forest is dense as it is and difficult to penetrate, either on foot or with scanning technology. But over the past few years, improved light detection and ranging scans have begun to penetrate the forest canopy, revealing previously unknown evidence of past Amazonian cultures. In a new paper, CNSR archaeologist Stephen Rostain and his colleagues describe evidence of such an Amazonian agricultural culture that began more than 2,000 years ago. The authors described more than 6,000 platforms distributed in a geometric pattern connected by roads and intertwined with agricultural landscapes and river drainage channels in the Upano Valley of Amazonian Ecuador, at the eastern foothills of the Andes. Such large-scale early development in the Upper Amazon resembles similar Maya urban systems in Central America.
Rostain other. They discovered a dense system of pre-Hispanic urban centers, characterized by constructed platforms and plazas, and connected by large straight roads.Image credit: Rostain other., doi: 10.1126/science.adi6317.
Although a growing number of studies focus on the extent and scale of pre-Hispanic occupation of the Amazon, evidence of large-scale urbanization remains elusive.
Rostain and his co-authors found evidence of an agricultural civilization that began more than 2,500 years ago in the Upano Valley of Amazonian Ecuador, a region at the eastern foothills of the Andes.
“Based on more than 20 years of interdisciplinary research, including fieldwork and light detection and ranging (LIDAR) mapping, we depict urbanism on a scale never before recorded in Amazonia,” they said. said.
“We describe the construction of more than 6,000 anthropogenic rectangular earth platforms and plazas connected by footpaths and roads and surrounded by extensive agricultural landscapes and river drainages within 300 km.2 This is the research area. ”
The authors identified at least 15 different settlements of varying size based on clusters of structures.
However, the most notable element of this built environment is the extensive and complex regional road network that connects the city center with the surrounding hinterland.
Archaeological excavations show that the construction and occupation of the platforms and roads took place between 500 BC and 300-600 AD, and was carried out by groups of the Kiramopu culture and later the Upano culture.
Such large-scale early development in the upper Amazon is comparable to similar Maya urban systems recently noted in Mexico and Guatemala.
“The Upano site is different from other monumental sites discovered in the Amazon; these are more recent and less extensive,” the researchers said.
“Discoveries like this are another vivid example of how the Amazon's dual heritage, not only environmental but also cultural and indigenous, is undervalued.”
“We believe it is important to radically revise preconceptions about the Amazonian world and, in doing so, reinterpret contexts and concepts in terms necessary for inclusive and participatory science.”
team's paper Published in the January 11th issue of the magazine science.
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Stefan Rostain other. 2024. Two thousand years of garden urbanization in the upper Amazon River basin. science 383 (6679): 183-189; doi: 10.1126/science.adi6317
Jim Peebles is widely known as the architect of modern cosmology and its nice-guy chief executive.give half a share of 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics, the committee said he “took up the universe” and helped create the framework known as the Standard Model of Cosmology, which is now considered “the basis of modern understanding of the history of the universe.” Others described him as an “extraordinary physicist” and “extraordinarily thoughtful, polite and kind.”
Now the Albert Einstein Professor Emeritus of Science at Princeton University, Peebles' career began there in the 1960s, focusing on Einstein's theory of general relativity, in which gravity occurs as a result of distortions of mass in spacetime. . He later characterized the cosmic microwave background (CMB), an “echo” of the Big Bang, a discovery that made cosmology an experimental science. He also showed that halos of dark matter around galaxies create a mass distribution consistent with astronomers' observations, and that the description of our universe requires reinstatement of Einstein's much-derided cosmological constant. I convinced the field that there was. Initially incorporated into the equations of general relativity as an unwieldy trick, it is now thought of as dark energy, the repulsive force driving the accelerating expansion of the universe.
Despite the success of the standard cosmological model, Peebles has always sought to undermine it. In recent years, he has focused his musings on observing astronomical anomalies – strange galaxies and other interesting phenomena – that may expose flaws in our thinking.
he says new scientist On his vision for cosmology and why it's important to deviate from the mainstream…
Over 15 years ago ESA's Mars Express spacecraft studied the Fossae Formation of Medusae and revealed mysterious deposits up to 2.5 km deep. These early observations left it unclear what the sediment was made of, but a new study provides an answer.
This image shows a height map of the surface of Mars, with the lowest land areas shown in blue and the highest land areas shown in white. Image credit: ESA.
of Formation of medusae fossa (MFF) – a huge and unusual soft rock deposit near Mars' equator – is about one-fifth the size of the continental United States and 100 times the mass of the largest explosive volcanic deposits on Earth.
It consists of several wind-carved features hundreds of kilometers in diameter and several kilometers high.
This feature, discovered at the boundary between highlands and lowlands on Mars, is probably the largest single source of dust on Mars.
Initial observations from ESA's Mars Express spacecraft show that the MFF is relatively transparent to radar and has low density, both characteristics seen in ice deposits.
But planetary scientists couldn't rule out the possibility that the terrain is actually drier, a huge accumulation of windblown dust, volcanic ash, or sediment.
“When we reexamined the MFF using new data from Mars Express's MARSIS radar, we found that the deposits were even thicker than we thought,” said Dr. Thomas Watters, a planetary researcher at the Smithsonian Institution. It's up to 3.7 kilometers thick,” said Dr. Thomas Watters, a planetary researcher at the Smithsonian Institution.
“Interestingly, the radar signal is consistent with what we would expect to see from layered ice, and is similar to the signal seen from the polar caps of Mars, which we know are very ice-rich.”
“If it were to melt, the ice trapped in the MFF would cover the entire planet in a layer of water 1.5 to 2.7 meters deep. This would be the largest amount of water ever discovered in this region of Mars. That's enough to fill Earth's Red Sea.”
“This is where the new radar data comes in. Given its depth, if the MFF is just a huge dust pile, we would expect it to be compressed under its own weight,” says the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics. said researcher Dr. Andrea Cicchetti.
“This will produce something much denser than what we're actually seeing with MARSIS.”
“And when we modeled how different materials behave without ice, nothing reproduced the properties of MFF. We need ice.”
“The new results suggest that there is instead a layer of dust and ice, topped by a protective layer of dry dust or ash hundreds of meters thick.”
In this image, the white line on Mars' surface (top) indicates the stretch of land scanned by Mars Express's MARSIS radar. The graph below shows the topography and subsurface structure of the land, with layers of dry sediment (likely dust or volcanic ash) shown in brown and layers of likely ice-rich sediment shown in blue. I am. The graph shows that the ice deposits are thousands of meters high and hundreds of kilometers wide. Once all the suspected water ice in the MFF melts, Mars will be covered by an ocean of water up to 2.7 meters deep. Image credit: CReSIS / KU / Smithsonian Institution.
“This latest analysis challenges our understanding of the MFF and raises as many questions as it answers,” said ESA Project Scientist for Mars Express and the ESA ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. said Dr. Colin Wilson.
“How long ago did these ice deposits form? What was Mars like at that time?”
“If confirmed to be water ice, these giant deposits could change our understanding of Mars' climate history.”
“Any ancient water reservoir would be an attractive target for human or robotic exploration.”
Protein plaques in the brain may be caused by mitochondrial dysfunction
Sebastian Kauritzky/Alamy
If you own a car, you’ve probably noticed that your engine becomes less efficient over time. The farther you drive, the more fuel it takes to cover the same distance. Eventually, you’ll end up with so little power that you need a physical push to climb a gentle hill.
It is now becoming clear that much the same holds true for the human brain. Microscopic structures called mitochondria, found in all brain cells, are literally the engines of our thoughts and emotions. As we age, we find it increasingly difficult to generate enough energy to power mental activity. Worse, just like an old car leaves behind a cloud of smoke, the power source of our cells begins to produce unnecessary waste products that slowly pollute our brains. This means that mitochondrial dysfunction may underlie some of the most serious brain diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and motor neuron disease.
According to this “grand unified theory” of neurodegeneration, recharging neurons through restoration of their power plants can prolong healthy brain function. This idea has already inspired some exciting new treatments for age-related brain diseases, with multiple drug candidates under investigation. Some researchers are exploring the possibility of transplanting healthy mitochondria into damaged, aging brains to reactivate them. “If you keep replacing the parts in your car, it can last forever,” he says. claudio soto, a neurologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. “So what happens if we try to run this…
A single atom of krypton trapped in a Buckminsterfullerene cage
University of Nottingham
The krypton atoms become stuck in a “traffic jam” inside the carbon nanotube, unable to pass through each other, allowing scientists to more easily observe how the krypton atoms interact. Researchers hope that this “primary energetic body” can shed light on fundamental physical forces.
Andrey Klobistov and his colleagues at the University of Nottingham, UK, have discovered that the narrow space restricts movement and makes it easier to observe the inside of carbon nanotubes, which are just 1.5 nanometers thick (one-half millionth the width of a human hair). He spent years studying chemical reactions. They have now developed a way to do the same thing with atoms of the rare gas krypton, creating a so-called one-dimensional gas.
The researchers used a buckminsterfullerene molecule, a spherical cage made of 60 carbon atoms, with a krypton atom trapped inside. These molecules are sucked into the carbon nanotube by van der Waals forces, weak attractive forces caused by fluctuations in the electron cloud surrounding the atomic nucleus. Once filled, the tube is heated to 1200 °C and the cage is destroyed. The carbon atoms are absorbed into the nanotube, leaving behind a string of krypton atoms.
A single atom of krypton confined in a Buckminsterfullerene cage inside a nanotube, observed with an electron microscope
University of Nottingham
Klovistov said the result is like a “traffic jam” in which atoms can be observed slowly, rather than flying around at up to 400 meters per second, as they often do in three-dimensional gases. The group used a transmission electron microscope to image atoms, allowing them to accurately measure the distances between them.
“They fundamentally change their behavior,” Klovistov said. “This is a very interesting system. We can track their trajectories, how they move and how they interact. This is a great toy to play with with noble gases. “We can gain a fundamental understanding of the behavior of atoms under extreme confinement.”
Other researchers have already observed that krypton atoms form pairs held together by van der Waals forces. This phenomenon is difficult to observe in unconstrained atoms and can also occur within nanotubes. Klobistov said future experiments will be “full of surprises.”
Future research will investigate how temperature affects primary gas. If you reduce the temperature of a gas in three-dimensional space, it will condense into a liquid and then solidify, but there is no guarantee that the same rules will apply in his one dimension.
“Maybe there's no such thing as a 1D liquid, it's just a 1D solid. It's a bit of a voyage of discovery,” says Klobistov.
AI has great capabilities, but remains an expensive option for some tasks
Yuichiro Kayano/Moment RF/Getty Images
Artificial intelligence may find its way into many people's jobs, but AI computer vision technology is still cheap enough to be valuable to most U.S. companies today, according to Fortune 500 CEOs and Silicon Valley leaders. Not. This finding comes from a study of human tasks, particularly those involving vision, that are at risk of machine automation.
In this study, researchers focused on whether vision tasks involved in various human jobs are economically worth replacing with existing AI computer vision. “There are a lot of tasks that you can imagine applying AI to, but you wouldn't actually want to do because of the cost,” he says. neil thompson Co-authored by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Published today as a working paper.
Thompson and colleagues identified 414 visual tasks in U.S. occupations that could potentially be automated with existing AI technology. These jobs include those of retail store supervisors who visually check to see if products have the correct price tag, or who notice dilated pupils or changes in cheek color that can be warning signs of potential problems. Includes a trained nurse anesthetist who monitors the patient's care.
The researchers calculated the cost of training and operating an AI computer vision model that can handle these tasks with the required precision. We then compared the cost of AI to the cost of human labor. The latter is expressed as a percentage of the employee's total salary and benefits. This is because visual tasks typically make up a small portion of a given employee's job duties.
As a result, while 36 percent of U.S. non-agricultural businesses have at least one employee task that can be automated with AI computer vision, there are few tasks that would be cost-effective to automate using AI. was found to be only 8%.
They also concluded that only 0.4 percent of U.S. non-farm worker pay and benefits is actually cost-effective for employers to automate.
The current cost of AI computer vision means that even large U.S. companies with 5,000 or more employees (over 99.9 percent of all U.S. companies) can cost-effectively automate less than one-tenth of their existing vision tasks. It means that.
While such a finding that AI computer vision would be too costly for most U.S. companies “may sound like a reassuring finding,” “there may be other consequences.” [AI] “Applications with low automation costs.” Gino Gancia at Queen Mary University of London.
rush to Adopts “generation AI” The ability to create new content is already having a negative impact on the number of jobs available and the incomes of human freelancers on online platforms such as: upwork. Gancia's research also shows that regions of the U.S. with industries that are more advanced in adopting AI, such as California, are already experiencing greater job losses.
“In general, we find that new technologies spread unevenly,” Gancia says. “As a result, automation and AI are likely to contribute to increasing inequality between businesses and workers.”
Thompson and his colleagues expect a significant amount of human work to be automated in the long term. But that depends on how quickly the costs of training and developing AI technology come down.
“There is going to be a significant amount of automation going forward, so governments need to start preparing for it,” Thompson said. “But there is plenty of time to put in place real programs that can bring benefits. [displaced] Worker. “
Analytical chemistry could help forensic teams get more information from crime scenes
Orange County Register/Media News Group (via Getty Images)
Even if no bullets are found at the scene, the brand of bullet used in the crime can be determined by analyzing the small pieces of metal left behind.
Forensic experts may try to link a suspect to a crime by analyzing bullets or spent shell casings found at a crime scene and proving that they were fired by the suspect's gun. . But doing so when the bullet is not present at the scene, such as when it has been removed…
The real megalodon may have been longer and slimmer than this illustration.
Kathmandu/Shutterstock
A new analysis of fossil evidence reveals that the megalodon, an ancient shark often depicted as a super-sized great white, was actually a very different beast. A team of shark scientists concluded that this fearsome predator was longer, thinner and hunted in a different way.
He is well known for his depiction of “. meg movie franchise, Otodus megalodon It became extinct about 3.5 million years ago. It was one of the largest marine predators of all time, but no complete skeleton has ever been found, so we don’t know exactly how big it was.
2022 survey by jack cooper Doctors from Swansea University, UK, et al. IRSNB P 9893, It is housed at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels. They found it to be a stocky, powerful shark, similar to the great white shark, built to attack at breakneck speeds to attack its prey.carcharodon carcharius) current –?? but at 15.9 meters long, it is about three times longer.
charles underwood Researchers from Birkbeck, University of London, said the study made “tenuous assumptions” about megalodon’s size, mainly based on the fact that it has teeth similar to great white sharks, although it is much larger. ing. He is part of a group of 26 shark experts aiming to set the record straight with new research.
Underwood said Cooper’s team didn’t realize how incomplete the partial skeleton was. The vertebrae lack the typical size of a shark, tapering toward both the tail and the head, indicating that much of the vertebrae are missing, he said.
The researchers of the new study say that the strength of the spinal column suggests a slender body shape than the great white shark, which would make megalodon sharks very unwieldy.
“It almost certainly doesn’t feed like modern great white sharks,” Underwood said. “You wouldn’t just hover over the ocean floor, wait for the whale to move over it, and then hit the whale from below and basically tear it apart. It’s better than an ambush predator. , you’re going to need more straight-line tracking, longer tracking, because you don’t have top speed. You don’t have acceleration.”
Based on other partial fossils, the largest known specimen of Megalodon was estimated to be 20 meters long. Mr. Underwood believes that it was actually 20% longer than him, and that he was 24 meters long.
But Professor Cooper dismissed the new study as too simplistic, favoring a reconstruction of a shorter, stockier megalodon. “The bottom line is, no matter which theory you support about its body shape, it was a very large shark,” he says. “Of course, a complete skeleton would go a long way in helping us learn more. But I also don’t think we should think that this settles all debates about this very charismatic animal.”
However, the chances of finding a complete, well-preserved specimen may be low. eva stewart A professor at Britain’s Southampton University, who was not involved in the study, said he had recovered many megalodon teeth while searching for a new living species, but had seen no sign of a more complete specimen.
“I think the rest of the skeleton is just not well preserved,” she says. “For megalodon, there’s actually no fossil evidence at all.”
A recent study suggests that the megalodon’s body shape might not have been as chunky as previously thought. Contrary to popular belief, researchers now suspect that this prehistoric fish, also known as the megalodon (Otodus megalodon), may have had a more elongated form, akin to modern slim sharks.
The typical estimation of the megalodon’s length is between 15 to 20 meters (50 to 65 feet), and they inhabited the earth’s oceans from 15 million to 3.6 million years ago. However, the fossil record contains limited evidence of the megalodon, mainly consisting of teeth and vertebrae rather than intact skeletons.
While previous estimates of its body size were based on the bodies of contemporary great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharius), resulting in the assumption of a thick and round body shape, a new study published in the Old Trogia Electronica journal suggests that the megalodon was more than just a larger version of the great white shark. The study contends that the animal may have had similarities to the slimmer modern mako shark.
So what’s the controversy?
Essentially, two groups of scientists are at odds over the actual size and shape of the megalodon.
A study led by scientists from DePaul University and the University of California, Riverside (UCR) employed a CT scanner on a live great white shark to compare its vertebral skeleton to existing reconstructions of the megalodon’s spinal column. This study suggests significant enough differences between the two sharks to propose that the megalodon was not merely a larger great white shark.
However, a UK-based research team utilized advanced 3D modeling to study the body structures of various shark species, including great whites, mako sharks, and salmon sharks. With this approach, they concluded that the megalodon may have been even larger than previously anticipated, with a dorsal fin comparable in size to an adult’s height.
The earlier study’s authors critiqued the new findings, asserting that they rely on circular logic and lack statistical validation. They also mentioned the absence of raw data for future researchers to verify or reproduce the study’s results. Their study was peer-reviewed by prominent shark experts from around the world, although not by the authors of the new study.
Yeah, but…can Jason Statham still defeat Megalodon?
Regardless of the megalodon’s shape, the lifespan and dietary habits of this extinct shark remain unclear. To further advance their understanding, researchers will need to find a complete or near-complete skeleton. The potential elongated body of the megalodon, if confirmed, could prompt a reassessment of its life, diet, and extinction causes.
As for the debate over the megalodon’s size and shape, the fact that it was a large, formidable predator is indisputable. However, the question of whether Jason Statham could defeat it in battle remains up for discussion.
“Even with the interpretation of the megalodon’s shape as more slender, I don’t think the odds for that matchup will change significantly,” Cooper stated. “Regardless of which theory you favor, whether the shark was fat or skinny, the short answer is that megalodon was still a very large shark. Either way, it’s a massive challenge for Statham.”
About our experts
Jack Cooper is a postdoctoral researcher in palaeontology at Swansea University. His research covers scientific report, scientific progress and the Fish Biology Journal.
Professor Catalina Pimiento is a Senior Lecturer in Paleontology at Swansea University. Her research specializes in Frontiers of ecology and evolution, natural ecology and evolution, and scientific progress.
Professor John Hutchinson is Professor of Evolutionary Biomechanics at the Royal Veterinary College. His research spans nature communications, anatomy journal, and scientific progress.
It may be hard to miss, but unimaginably strong bursts of cosmic radiation happen possibly a thousand times every day. They are bright enough to overwhelm our radio telescopes from billions of light-years away.
However, fast radio bursts (FRBs) were not detected until 2007. Despite over a decade of investigation, they remain one of the most intriguing mysteries in astrophysics. Recent research offers new and promising clues about their origins, while also revealing why these space phenomena are so perplexing in the first place.
When FRBs were first discussed in seminars, the big question wasn’t “What astrophysical cause is causing this?” Instead, it was, “Isn’t this just a mechanical failure?”
FRBs last about 1 millisecond and spread out in frequency in a manner very similar to a blip from a pulsar. But the problem is, they don’t come from any known pulsars, they don’t repeat like pulsars, and they’re clearly much more powerful than any pulsar pulses we’ve seen before.
To make matters worse, for many years the only telescope that observed FRBs was the Parkes Observatory in Australia. The debate became even more heated when it turned out that some of the FRB-like bursts observed by Parkes did not come from astronomical sources.
These bursts, called “peritons,” were always suspected to be of terrestrial origin. But clever detective work by astronomers solved the case. Dr. Emily Petrov and her colleagues showed that Periton had a strong correlation with local lunchtime. In reality, radiation leaked from the observatory’s microwave when the door opened too early.
It was eventually revealed that the FRBs were indeed from far away in space. More radio telescopes were configured to record very short bursts of radio waves, and detection rates began to skyrocket.
Those bursts came from all over the sky, suggesting they didn’t originate in our galaxy. In the first decade after the discovery, theorists produced a huge number of papers explaining the possible origins of the bursts.
In 2012, repeated FRBs were discovered, ruling out origins requiring complete destruction, such as supernovae. It was soon discovered that there were many more repeated bursts, mostly occurring at irregular intervals.
As more outbursts are discovered, there is growing evidence that FRBs may be associated with extraordinarily powerful magnetars: neutron stars that rotate in extremely strong magnetic fields.
Recent evidence suggests that at least some FRBs originate from nearby spiral galaxies rather than elliptical galaxies.
Astronomers will need to continue collecting clues, looking for suggestive patterns in the data, and eagerly awaiting observational upgrades that will allow them to pinpoint the FRBs’ local environment.
Whatever the outcome, the fast radio burst is a great example of the fact that in science, when we look at the universe in new and different ways, we almost always discover something surprising that no one had ever thought to look for.
This spring, in a rare synchronized phenomenon that last occurred in 1803, swarms of two different cicadas, one with a 13-year cycle and two with a 17-year cycle, emerge from the ground at the same time.
Billions of winged insects emerge from the Midwest to the Southeast, beginning in late April in some regions and performing noisy mating rituals that tend to fascinate and disgust in equal measure.
This year’s twin feathering is a once-in-a-lifetime event. Although a particular 13-year offspring and his 17-year offspring may appear at the same time, the cycles of a particular pair align only once in his 221 years. Additionally, this year’s groups of cicadas, known as Brood XIII and Brood XIX, happen to have habitats adjacent to each other and narrowly overlapping in central Illinois.
“The last time these two brothers were on the scene, Thomas Jefferson was president, so is that unusual? Yes.” said Gene Kritsky, author of “A Tale of Two Broods,” a book about this year’s double broods.
After 2024, Brood XIII and Brood XIX cicadas will not synchronize their emergence for another 221 years.
These types of cicadas are regular insects that spend most of their lives underground feeding on tree roots. After 13 or 17 years, depending on the mate, the cicada tunnels to the surface and matures, noisily searching for a mate for a month.
Cicadas typically appear on the surface in the spring when soil temperatures reach about 64 degrees Fahrenheit.
Blue dots on the map indicate Brood XIII cicadas, and red dots are areas where Brood XIX has appeared in the past. These areas may experience periodic cicadas in 2024.semi-safari
The Blued XIII cicada appears in the Midwest, primarily in Illinois, but has also spread to Wisconsin, Ohio, and Iowa. Stage XIX cicadas have been sighted in a much wider geographic area, including Missouri, Illinois, Louisiana, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland.
When these insects emerge, they occur in large numbers. And they are not quiet at all in the mating frenzy.
The insects are known to emit a high-pitched buzz, or mating song, that can reach up to 100 decibels, which is about the same as a motorcycle or a jackhammer.
The insects themselves are harmless to humans, but billions of insects emerge from the ground, making the cicada noisy for several weeks during its lifespan. When that happens, the ground can also be littered with large amounts of dead insects.
In 2019 “ semi-safari This will allow citizen scientists to report cicada sightings from their location.
“I’ve already spoken to six people who want to take a vacation and come to the area for the cicadas,” he said. “In years past, I’ve helped people plan vacations that depart while the cicadas are singing.”
In parts of the Southeast where the Blued XIX cicada occurs, the insects may begin to emerge from underground in late April.
Then, as temperatures warm across the Southeast and Midwest, more cicadas will show up throughout May and June.
When the insect reaches the surface, it sheds its nymph exoskeleton and spreads its wings. It usually takes a few more days for adult skin to harden.
The mating ritual itself is hectic, with cicadas taking only a few weeks to find a mate and lay eggs. This entire process takes approximately 6 weeks.
“By July 1st, they’ll be gone,” Kritsky said.
But while cicadas are on the ground, scientists are keen to track where they appear. Kritsky himself plans to study cicadas in the Chicago area, and hopes people in the Midwest and Southeast will report sightings using the Cicada Safari app.
Mapping insect ranges helps researchers understand how cicadas adapt and change between cycles. During this year’s double emergence, scientists are also interested in whether mating will occur between two different chicks.
But beyond science, Kritsky said this year is also a chance to experience a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon.
“This year marks 50 years since I started researching cicadas,” he says. “Many of us will be in the borderlands of Illinois, driving back and forth, meeting for coffee and eating pie.”
Humans are not the fastest or strongest species. We have no wings, fangs, claws, poison, or armor. Physically, we are primarily controlled by nature.
However, the words “run the same way'' are ironic. This is because humans physically dominate all other species in one area: long-distance running. Thanks to our bipedalism and unique sweat glands, humans can continue running long after other species have collapsed from exhaustion.
Humans have evolved to train their bodies, or exercise, over long periods of time. But while many people actually enjoy exercise, they're in the minority (as evidenced by uncrowded gyms and abandoned New Year's resolutions in mid-February).
So why doesn't everyone enjoy exercise, even though we've evolved to do so? It’s because of the mysterious complexity of the human brain.Evolving abilities does not automatically evolve want to use it. Armored creatures do not want to be actively attacked.
Although physical exercise is not that Bad, but still usually unpleasant and uncomfortable. It must be so. You end up pushing your body to its physical limits, which leads to significant discomfort. There are limits for a reason.
What does the brain think about exercise?
Another problem is that the human brain is extremely sensitive to wasted effort. Research has shown that the insular cortex contains dedicated circuitry. Calculate the effort required for an action – They are there to ask “Is it worth it?”
This is a trend that evolved to prevent us from wasting vital resources on pointless endeavors, such as walking 20 miles to buy a handful of berries.
However, regular exercise to “get in shape” requires constant and great effort. It's all about gradual progress and uncertain rewards (it's impossible to guarantee success in advance). In other words, your brain tends to ask, “Is it worth it?” It would be difficult to keep quiet.
This trait also means that we typically prefer things that give us the most reward with the least amount of effort. So we choose the path of least resistance, stick to our routine, and stay in our comfort zone.
Starting to exercise means changing everything for an uncertain result. To keep us safe, our brains typically tend to value risk over reward, making us more reluctant to engage in physically demanding activities.
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So while our bodies may be adapted to continuous exercise, our brains are adapted to avoid it in many ways. And we have built a world for ourselves where avoiding physical activity is a viable option.
Thankfully, the human brain is an incredibly complex organ, so there are some metaphorical tricks up your sleeve. Most obviously, it is not dominated by more primitive and direct instincts and impulses. Many species' thought processes are limited to “Food, eat!”, “Danger, run!”, “Pain, avoid!”, but we have evolved beyond that.
The human brain is capable of forming multiple long-term goals and ambitions. We are rarely satisfied with just day-to-day survival. We simply simulate a desired future scenario, figure out how to achieve it, and then…do it. Or at least strive towards it.
This directly affects how our brains process motivation and willpower in many interesting ways. First, it allows you to delay gratification. In other words, you will realize that it is important to refuse the reward now.Can lead to bigger rewards later, and act accordingly.
In this case, eating four bags of potato chips as a family while watching TV is fun in the moment, but going to the gym will make you fitter, stronger, and fitter later on.
And then there's the “just world” fallacy. Here we assume the world is fair and that is what makes us believe. research shows this – No matter how much suffering you suffer, it will always lead to reward. As the saying goes, no pain, no gain.
How the brain increases motivation
So how does the brain process all these different motivations? Self-contradiction theory suggests that we have multiple “selves” active in our minds at any given time. The “real” self, the “ideal” self, and the “ideal” self.
Your “actual” self is your current state, or how you are right now. Your “ideal self” is yourself. want Something to do. And your “ideal” self is one that does whatever it takes to become your “ideal” self.you do what you do should What I'm doing. In other words, if your “ideal” self is a professional soccer player and your “real” self is not, then the “ideal” you is someone who has to train, exercise, and train a lot to get better at soccer. It's someone who spends their time.
This is just one framework for how motivation works when it comes to physical exercise. Of course, there are many other factors that play an important role, such as time constraints, body image, and ease of movement.
However, as far as the brain is concerned, there are processes that prevent movement and processes that promote movement. Ideally, you'll end up focusing more on the latter than the former. Also, moving weights is a classic exercise, so it's a good idea to start somewhere.
Scientists have made a monumental discovery about what lies beneath a mysterious mass buried below Mars’ equator, revealing the presence of ice that could be crucial in planning for potential life on the red planet.
New data from ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft has uncovered ice extending several kilometers below the surface of Mars, providing unprecedented insight into the planet’s subsurface.
Fifteen years ago, Mars Express explored the wind-sculpted Medusae fossai formation, which is where the ice is currently located. The spacecraft initially found large deposits estimated to be 2.5 km (1.6 miles) deep, but the content of these deposits remained a mystery until now. Scientists have since confirmed that the deposit stretches an incredible 3.7 km (2.3 miles) deep and is thicker than previously thought.
The volume of ice discovered is substantial, with enough water content to cover Mars with a layer 1.5 to 2.7 meters (4.9 to 8.9 feet) deep if melted – equivalent to the Red Sea’s capacity on Earth.
“Interestingly, the radar signal is consistent with what you would expect to see from layered ice, and from the polar caps of Mars, which we know to be very ice-rich,” said Thomas Watters of the Smithsonian Institution, lead author of the study.
The recent discovery, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, constitutes the largest detection of water in this region of Mars yet. The presence of water could significantly impact future human exploration of Mars, potentially favoring equatorial locations over the ice-rich polar caps.
“The finding of water ice buried underground on Mars does not directly provide optimism for discovering extraterrestrial life there, but it does offer hope for human colonization on the red planet,” commented Dr. Darren Baskill, an astronomy lecturer at the University of Sussex.
The deposit’s location close to the equator suggests that the water ice is a relic from Mars’ history, challenging current understandings of the planet’s climate and prompting further research into its implications.
About our experts
Dr. Darren Baskill is an Outreach Officer and Lecturer in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Sussex. He previously lectured at the Royal Observatory Greenwich and organized the annual Astronomical Photographer of the Year competition.
A full moon low on the horizon is one of the most fascinating sights in the night sky. It is also one of the easiest astronomical phenomena to observe. You don't need any special equipment to see the full moon, and you don't need a star map to find it.
It's helpful to learn a little about the different craters on the moon. By observing the moon regularly, you can see how its characteristics change as the moon waxes and wanes.
Whether you're an experienced astronomer, a budding astrophotographer or someone with an interest in astrology, it's useful to know when the next full moon will be visible in the UK. For those who want to try their hand at moon photography, expert Pete Lawrence has put together a guide on how to take great photos of the moon. This guide is full of helpful (and practical!) tips and hints.
Discover more amazing views of the night sky with our beginner's guide to astronomy, and record natural fireworks on your calendar. All 2024 meteor showers are listed in our definitive guide.
When is the next full moon?
Next full moon is January 25, 2024, also known as the Wolf Moon. Other names for January's full moon include Moon After Yule, Ice Moon, and Old Moon.
A full moon is part of a lunar cycle that takes 29.53 days (29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 3 seconds) to complete. In other words, a full moon occurs every 29.53 days. Since this is less than one calendar month, you may see two full moons in one month, and that “extra” full moon is known as a “blue moon.”
During the Full Moon phase of the lunar cycle, the Moon, Earth, and Sun are aligned, with the Moon 180 degrees opposite the Sun. That's why during a full moon, the moon rises and the sun sets (and vice versa).
Full moon day in 2024
January 25th, 5:54pm: wolf moon
February 24th, 12:30pm: snow moon
March 25th, 7am: worm moon
April 23rd, 11:49pm: pink moon
May 23rd, 1:53pm: flower moon
June 22nd 1:08am: strawberry moon
July 21st 10:17am: back moon
August 19th, 6:26pm: sturgeon moon
September 18th, 2:34am: corn moon
October 17th 11:25am: hunter's moon
November 15th, 9:28pm: beaver moon
December 15th 9:02am: cold moon
When will the 2024 supermoon occur?
Supermoon is an unofficial name that has become increasingly popular in recent years. This refers to a full moon that appears larger and brighter than other full moons that year.
Because the Moon orbits the Earth in an elliptical shape, its distance from us changes throughout the year. When the moon is closest to us, this is called lunar perigee. When it is farthest from us, it is known as the moon's apogee.
When perigee occurs near a full moon, the moon appears larger and brighter, creating a supermoon. Typically, this is when the Moon is about 360,000 km or less from us, but this is not always the case.
2024 supermoon dates
sturgeon supermoon
August 19th: 361,969 kilometers (224,917 miles)
corn supermoon
September 18th: 357,485 kilometers (222,131 miles)
hunter's supermoon
October 17th: 357,363 kilometers (222,055 miles)
beaver supermoon
November 15th: 361,866 kilometers (224,853 miles)
What is the lunar cycle?
The moon appears to change shape throughout the lunar cycle.
new moon
waxing crescent moon
1st quarter
The waxing Gibbs moon
full moon
The fading gibbous moon
3rd quarter
waning crescent moon
Another new moon.
We can see the moon because it reflects light from the sun. As it orbits the Earth, the amount of light reflected back to us changes. When the moon passes between the sun and the earth, light can no longer be reflected back to us and a new moon occurs.
A full moon occurs when the Earth is between the sun and the moon, when the moon's surface is completely illuminated by the sun. During those hours, only part of the moon can reflect light back to Earth.
If the moon orbits the Earth in the same plane that the Earth orbits the sun, the moon will block light from the sun every time a new moon occurs.
However, this does not happen because the Moon orbits at an angle of about 5 degrees compared to the Earth's orbit of the Sun. When the Moon passes through the Earth's orbit and her three celestial bodies, the Earth, Moon, and Sun, line up.
This is called Shijiji. A solar eclipse occurs when a lunation occurs during a new moon, and a lunar eclipse occurs when a lunation occurs during a full moon.
How can I photograph the moon at night?
To photograph the moon with your phone, you may need to play around with your camera settings. No flash, lower ISO and set focus to 100.
If you don't know how to make these changes, use the Night Photography app ( night cap– Available at app store£2.99) gives you more control over your camera settings than the regular camera app.
If you're using a digital camera, start with an aperture between f/11 and f/16 and a shutter speed between 1/60 and 1/125 seconds. A tripod can help reduce shaking in low-light situations when you need to hold the camera still and keep the shutter open a little longer.
To get the best photos of the moon, you need to be creative with your shots so that you can fit the moon in the frame depending on the surrounding scenery. There is a lot of software available to help you plan where you will see the moon or anything else in the night sky ( moon locator App – available at android device, free).
To find more software worthy of your home screen, check out our guide to the best astronomy apps.
Moon photography is a great way to get started with astrophotography. The moon's appearance changes throughout the month. Not only the shape changes, but also the craters and the moon. Similarly, shadows create tricks of light that make the moon a brilliant subject.
You don't need much in terms of equipment. If you have a smartphone and a tripod, you can take good photos.
Related: Read Pete Lawrence's expert guide on how to photograph the moon. It features beginner, intermediate, and advanced projects that you can try at home.
Does the moon rotate?
Yes, the moon rotates. But it is tidally locked and rotates in sync with Earth's orbit, so for every Earth orbit he makes one revolution.
This means that the same side is always facing us as we move around the Earth. This is why we have the term “dark side of the moon,” which refers to the side we never see. In fact, that side of the moon receives as much sunlight as the side we see, so the correct term is “far side of the moon.”
What is a Blood Moon? How can I see it?
“During a total lunar eclipse, the moon turns red because Earth's atmosphere scatters blue light and only lets red light through. This is called a blood moon,” says Abigail Beale.
The next total lunar eclipse visible from the UK will be on 14 March 2025 (UK, Europe, Africa, the Americas, East Asia, Australia).
We have some time before we wait for the next Blood Moon. Below are the dates of the next total lunar eclipse that will result in a blood moon.
March 14, 2025:UK, Europe, Africa, America, East Asia, Australia
September 7, 2025:UK, Europe, Asia, Australia
March 3, 2026: America, Asia, Australia
December 31, 2028:UK, Europe, Asia, Australia, Western US, Canada
Whether you’re a seasoned pro or a casual observer, a good meteor shower is always fun to watch
These occur at the same time every year, but you don’t need expensive equipment to get the most out of them. In fact, you’re better without a telescope. By using just your eyes, you can take in a wider field of view and see more meteors.
Why do meteor showers occur on specific days?
As the Earth orbits the Sun, each year we pass through the same stream of debris left behind by comets and sometimes asteroids. In the case of periodic comets such as the large comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which is the parent object of the summer Perseid meteor shower, the stream is replenished each time it passes.
Summarized meteor showers in 2024
In this article, we have summarized all the meteor showers in 2024, their maximum period, and the number of meteors that can be observed.
Learn about constellations
While you wait for that all-important peak night, why not brush up on your constellations with our handy astronomer’s guide for beginners? Having a broad understanding of constellations will help you identify and observe the radiance of each meteor shower. It will help you get the most out of your experience.
Full moon calendar
If you prefer the moon, check out our full moon calendar. All dates, names, and times are compiled into one comprehensive list. It also includes some trivia about the moon.
What is a meteor shower?
A meteor shower is a cascade of meteors, also called shooting stars, that flash across the sky and leave a trail of light in their wake. They occur on certain days every year and can be a spectacular sight if conditions are right.
When is the next meteor shower?
After the quadrant meteor shower in January, Britain’s next major meteor shower will be the Lyrids, followed quickly by Eta Aquarius in April. The peaks of these showers are expected on April 22-23 and May 6, respectively, so mark your calendars.
Meteor Showers in 2024
See below the dates of all 2024 meteor showers, along with peak times and number of meteors seen per hour.
quadrant meteor shower
Active: December 28, 2023 – January 12, 2024 peak: January 3-4, 2024 Price/hour: 110 radiation: Boes Parent body: Probably 2003 EH1, but not confirmed yet Peak moon illumination: 59-49%
Urinidae
Active: December 17th to 26th peak: December 22nd-23rd Price/hour: Ten radiation: Ursa Minor Parent body: Comet 8P/Tuttle Peak moon illumination: 61-51%
Woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) The peoples of mainland Alaska overlapped with the first peoples of this region for at least 1,000 years. However, it is unclear how mammoths used the space they shared with humans. In a new study, scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and elsewhere analyzed a 14,000-year-old female mammoth tusk discovered at an archaeological site in Fairbanks. swan point They showed that she migrated nearly 1,000 km (621 miles) from northwestern Canada to inhabit the Shaw Creek watershed in interior Alaska, an area with the highest concentration of early remains in interior Alaska. Early Alaskans appear to have built their settlements based in part on the prevalence of mammoths, utilizing them for raw materials and perhaps food.
The piece shows three mammoths being observed by an ancient Alaskan family from a sand dune near the Swan Point ruins, a seasonal hunting camp inhabited 14,000 years ago. Image credit: Julius Csostonyi.
The woolly mammoth at the center of the study, named Elmayujaye by the Healy Lake Village Council, was discovered at Swan Point, Alaska's oldest archaeological site, which also contained the remains of a juvenile mammoth and a baby.
Mammoth fossils have also been found at three other sites within 10 km of Swan Point.
In the study, University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Audrey Rowe and her colleagues conducted detailed isotopic analysis of complete tusks and genetic analysis of the remains of many other mammoth individuals, comparing the subject's movements and similar Pieced together relationships with other mammoths in location and environment. Neighborhood.
They determined that the Swan Point area was likely the gathering place for at least two closely related but distinct maternal herds.
“This is a fascinating story about the complexity of mammoth life and behavior, about which we have little insight,” said Dr. Hendrik Poynar, director of the McMaster Center for Ancient DNA at McMaster University.
The authors sequenced the mitochondrial genomes of eight woolly mammoths found at Swan Point and other nearby sites to see if and how they were related.
They also conducted isotopic analysis of a 14,000-year-old tusk from Elmayujaye (Elma) taken from Swan Point.
“Mammoth tusks grew like tree trunks, with thin layers showing steady growth, and isotopes of different elements such as oxygen and strontium providing information about the target's movements,” the researchers said. Ta.
“The female mammoth lived most of her life in a relatively small area of the Yukon Territory and died when she was about 20 years old.”
“As she grew older, she traveled more than 1,000 kilometers in just three years, settling in interior Alaska and dying near related babies and boys, suggesting that she may have been the matrilineal leader. unknown.”
“Mammoths are estimated to behave much like modern elephants, with females and young living in close-knit matrilineal herds, and adult males traveling alone or in looser groups of males. They are often thought to have a wider range than females.
The researchers extracted and analyzed ancient DNA from Elmayujay's tusks and found that the mammoth was closely related to other mammoths at the same site, and more distantly related to other mammoths at a nearby site called Holzmann. found.
“Early humans had a deep understanding of mammoths and the art of hunting them, and used mammoth habitats for scavenging and hunting detritus as raw material for tools,” the researchers said.
“In addition to the direct effects of hunting on mammoth populations, human activities and settlements have also affected mammoth populations indirectly by restricting mammoth movement and access to preferred grazing areas. There is a possibility.”
“For early people in Alaska, these areas were important for observation and viewing, as well as potential food sources,” Dr. Poyner said.
The data collected suggests that people organized seasonal hunting camps based on where mammoths congregated, and that this may have had an indirect effect on the localized extinction of mammoths in Alaska, which was further exacerbated by a rapidly changing climate and changes in vegetation. This suggests that it may have played a role.
However, such deprivation does not seem to have affected the mammoths involved.
“She was a young adult in her prime,” said Professor Matthew Wooler, director of the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility and a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
“Her isotopes showed that she was not malnourished and that she died during the same season as the Swan Point seasonal hunting camp where her tusk was found.”
“This is more than just looking at stone tools and ruins and making assumptions. This analysis of lifetime migration is very helpful in understanding how humans and mammoths lived in these areas,” McMaster said. said Dr. Tyler Murchy, a postdoctoral fellow at the university.
a paper The findings were published in this week's magazine scientific progress.
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Audrey G. Lowe other. 2024. The female woolly mammoth's lifelong migration ends in an ancient Alaskan hunter-gatherer camp. scientific progress 10(3); doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adk0818
Two weeks before the pandemic lockdown in March 2020, I flew to Tucson, Arizona, and knocked on the door of a suburban ranch-style home. I was there to visit Stuart Hammeroff. He is an anesthesiologist and co-inventor with Nobel Prize-winning physicist Roger Penrose of a radical proposal for how conscious experience arises: that it has its origins in quantum phenomena in the brain.
Such ideas, in one form or another, have existed on the fringes of mainstream consciousness research for decades. There is no solid experimental evidence that quantum effects occur in the brain, as critics claim, and aside from a clear idea of how quantum effects produce consciousness, they come in from the cold. Not that it was. “It was very popular to bash us,” Hammeroff told me.
But after a week of questioning him about the concept, I realized that at least his version of quantum consciousness is widely misunderstood. Partly, I think it’s Hammeroff’s fault. He gives the impression of a single package. In fact, his ideas are a series of independent proposals, each forcing us to confront important questions about the relationship between fundamental physics, biology, and the indescribable thing called consciousness. I am.
Furthermore, during my visit I saw several experiments that Hammeroff had proposed come to fruition, and it became clear that his ideas could be applied to experimental research. Researchers have now provided preliminary evidence suggesting that fragile quantum states can persist in the brain and that anesthetics can influence those states.
Artist's impression of a pulsar orbiting a black hole – one possible interpretation of the mysterious binary star system
Daniel Hutseller (artsource.nl)
Some 40,000 light-years away, a strange object could be either the heaviest neutron star or the lightest black hole ever seen, and it resides in a mysterious celestial void that astronomers have never directly observed. .
Neutron stars form when a star runs out of fuel and collapses due to gravity, creating a shock wave called a supernova and leaving behind an extremely dense core. Astrophysical calculations show that these nuclei must remain below a certain mass, about 2.2 times the mass of the Sun, or they will collapse further to form a black hole.
However, black holes have only been observed to have a mass more than five times that of the sun, leaving a gap in scale between neutron stars and black holes. Gravitational-wave observatories have observed several dense objects in this gap, but astronomers have never discovered them with conventional telescopes.
now, Ewan Barr Researchers at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy discovered an object with 2.5 times the mass of the Sun by observing pulsars orbiting around it. A pulsar is a neutron star that emits pulses of light at regular millisecond intervals due to a strong magnetic field.
As predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, pulsars emit light with great regularity, but very large nearby objects can distort these rhythms. Dr. Barr and his team were able to calculate the mass of the pulsar's partner by observing the pulsar's pulses for more than a year using his MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa.
“What we've discovered in this binary system appears to go beyond that [upper limit for neutron star mass]This suggests that there is some new physics going on here and that this is either a new type of star, or simply a black hole, the lightest stellar-mass black hole yet discovered. “There will be,” Barr said.
Pulsars are located in globular clusters, which are dense regions of stars and some rare objects that can pass close to each other. These unusual interactions could explain the mysterious object, Barr said.
If it's a black hole, researchers will be able to test theories of gravity that weren't possible before. “A pulsar is just a ridiculously accurate measuring device in orbit around a black hole, but it's not going anywhere. It's going to be around for the next billion years,” Barr says. “So this is an incredibly stable and natural test bed for investigating the physics of black holes.”
“If it's a neutron star, it would be more massive than any neutron star we've ever seen,” he says. Christine Dunn At Durham University, UK. “This actually tells us about the ultimate density that a star can support before it collapses under its own gravity and becomes a black hole. We need to understand the physics of matter at such extreme densities. I don't know what the limits are.”
Barr and his team plan to observe the pulsar with other telescopes over the next few years, looking for clues about what the object is. If it were a black hole, we would see the pulsar's orbit change over time, as the black hole dragged through spacetime around it, much like a ship dragging a small boat behind it. Or if it's a neutron star, more sensitive instruments might be able to detect the light.
Japan's Smart Lander for Lunar Exploration (SLIM) has landed on the moon. Although the spacecraft is not operating perfectly, the successful landing follows a series of recent failed moon landings by governments and private spaceflight companies, and remains encouraging for international efforts to explore the moon. . With this landing, Japan will become the fifth country to land on the moon, following the United States, Soviet Union, China, and India.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched SLIM in September 2023, and the spacecraft took a long orbit to the moon, circling the Earth several times to conserve fuel. It has been orbiting the moon since December, taking images of the surface and preparing for landing.
The January 19 touchdown marked the first use of a technology engineers dubbed “smart eye,” which allows SLIM to aim its landing spot with extreme precision. SLIM determined its position by comparing images from its onboard camera with data from other spacecraft orbiting the moon, then autonomously navigated to a landing site on the slopes of Sioli Crater. JAXA officials are continuing to analyze how well the targeting protocol worked.
Initial signals from SLIM suggest that the solar panels do not appear to be operational, so the spacecraft is operating on battery power for now. If spacecraft operators are unable to figure out what's wrong with the solar cells and get them working, SLIM's scientific capabilities could be hampered and its lifespan significantly shortened. According to JAXA officials, battery life is expected to be only a few hours. It's possible the spacecraft will regain solar power, but for now JAXA's priority is to return as much data as possible to Earth before its batteries run out.
As SLIM descended to the lunar surface, two small rovers, each carrying a small payload of scientific instruments, also descended. One of them is designed to bounce rather than roll on wheels, and the other is a tennis ball. He was designed by toy manufacturers to roll on the moon, with a sphere slightly smaller than a ball. The spacecraft appears to be functioning normally.
Spacecraft landing sites are potentially important. Previous observations suggest that material may have come from inside the moon during the impact that formed the crater. SLIM's scientific instruments can study these minerals to learn about the formation and evolution of the Moon. A successful landing and the scientific data collected will provide useful data for the many spacecraft scheduled to travel to the moon from around the world in the coming years.
A mother manatee (pictured above) swims up to a cave diver in a flooded cave in Quintana Roo, Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Klaus ThiemannThey captured amazing photos of these endangered mammals living in unique, unexplored habitats. “Of course I think she's looking at me,” Tyman says. “But in reality, she's probably seeing what's on camera.”
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Carved into the limestone by flowing water, this cave system is thought to be up to 16,000 kilometers long and connects coastal and inland cenotes, freshwater-filled sinkholes created when cave roofs collapse. is. Timan and his fellow divers have been exploring this system (pictured above) to photograph manatees, which, unlike humans, can easily navigate passages.
Although manatees have likely lived in the area for generations, it is estimated that fewer than 250 manatees exist in the Mexican Caribbean, Tiemann said. Timan is concerned that nearby construction projects are endangering aquatic species in the area. A new railway line will further develop this popular tourist destination (pictured above). Construction can impede the flow of water through the system, starving it of oxygen and trapping manatees. Wastewater from surface runoff and sewage systems degrades the water quality of local aquifers.
Although the coastal area is protected as a manatee sanctuary, it does not extend as far inland as the manatees were photographed. So while the discovery of manatees in a relatively pristine cave system is good news, these habitats may not remain pristine for very long.
Dinosaurs may have been big and scary, but they weren’t lumbering beasts of prey. The more we learn about them, the more we realize how misguided our early reconstructions were. This glossy image feature compares historical depictions with our current knowledge. The difference is amazing.
white hole
Perhaps the most surprising scientific discovery of the past decade is that the universe is filled with black holes. They have been detected in an astonishing variety of sizes, with some having masses slightly more than the Sun and others billions of times larger. But what happens when black holes die? Carlo Rovelli reveals how they can rise again into new reflected forms. white hole.
dry january
Hard science shows that no matter how much alcohol you drink, it’s not good for your health. So should we reconsider the way we drink?
body dysmorphic disorder
If you suffer from body dysmorphia, an intense obsession with flaws in your appearance, you are not alone. It is thought to affect one in five young people. How is technology changing the way we see ourselves? We’ve taken a closer look at this often debilitating condition and put together a practical guide to alleviate your worries.
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meta quest 3: Tech expert Alex Hughes straps on the Meta Quest 3 and takes it for a spin. This headset has yet to deliver a truly viable home VR experience. finally Tell us about the future of virtual reality?
Do you have a genius dog? Scientists have identified the characteristics of a unique type of genius dog, and it all depends on how well they know their toys. If your dog can retrieve a toy by calling its name instead of chewing it up, you may have a genius.
Yellowstone eruption: National park. Wonders of nature. An existential threat? There are approximately 1,500 active volcanoes on Earth, 170 of which are in the United States. Few of these have captured our imaginations or evoked a collective sense of existential dread like Yellowstone. So, is the supervolcano threat worth the hype?
Issue 401 Released on January 19, 2024
don’t forget that BBC Science Focus Also available on all major digital platforms. There is a version of android, Kindle Fire and Kindle e-readers, but also, iOS app For iPad and iPhone.
NASA/ESA/CSA Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a small, active galaxy within GN-z11, an extremely bright galaxy that existed just 420 million years after the Big Bang, more than 13 billion years ago. detected a black hole. The existence of this multi-million solar mass black hole in the early universe challenges current assumptions about how black holes form and grow.
GN-z11, shown in the inset, was 13.4 billion years ago, just 400 million years after the Big Bang. Image credits: NASA / ESA / P. Oesch, Yale University / G. Brammer, STScI / P. van Dokkum, Yale University / G. Illingworth, University of California, Santa Cruz.
Astronomers believe that supermassive black holes found at the centers of galaxies like the Milky Way have grown to their current size over billions of years.
But the size of this newly discovered black hole suggests that black holes may form in another way. That means black holes could be “born big,” or eat matter five times faster than previously thought.
According to the Standard Model, supermassive black holes form from the remains of dead stars, which can collapse to form black holes about 100 times the mass of the Sun.
If this newly detected black hole grows as expected, it will take about a billion years to grow to its observed size.
However, when this black hole was detected, the universe was less than 1 billion years old.
Dr Roberto Maiolino, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge, said: “Since the last time such a massive black hole has been observed was in the very early days of the universe, we need to consider other ways in which black holes could form.'' Ta.
“Very early galaxies were so rich in gas that they would have been a buffet for black holes.”
Like all black holes, GN-z11's young black hole is accreting matter from its host galaxy to fuel its growth.
But it turns out that this ancient black hole gulped down matter much more energetically than its later cousins.
GN-z11 is a compact galaxy, about 100 times smaller than the Milky Way, but a black hole may be having a negative impact on its development.
When a black hole consumes too much gas, it pushes it away like a super-fast wind.
This “wind” could stop the star formation process and slowly kill the galaxy, but it would also kill the black hole itself, because it would also cut off its source of “food.”
“This is a new era. The huge leap in sensitivity, especially in the infrared, is like upgrading from Galileo's telescope to a modern telescope overnight,” Dr. Maiorino said.
“Before Mr. Webb came online, I thought the universe beyond what the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope could see might not be all that interesting.”
“But that wasn't the case at all. The universe is very generous with what it shows us, and this is just the beginning.”
“Webb's sensitivity means that even older black holes may be discovered in the coming months or years,” he added.
“We hope to use Webb's future observations to find smaller 'seeds' of black holes. We hope to find out the different ways in which black holes form – do they start out large? “It may help us understand the different ways black holes can form, such as whether they grow rapidly or whether they grow quickly.”
a paper The survey results were published in a magazine Nature.
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R. Maiolino other. A small, active black hole that existed in the early universe. Nature, published online on January 17, 2023. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07052-5
A new genus and species of a large wind dragon that lived about 218 million years ago has been described from a large portion of its carapace discovered in Texas, USA.
Aerosaurus life restoration chest typothorax. Image credit: Smokeybjb.
Aitosaurus is an extinct quadrupedal heavily armored reptile aetosaurs.
Their name means “eagle lizard” and comes from the fact that their skull resembles that of a bird.
These creatures could reach lengths of up to 6 m (20 ft) and were geographically widespread during the Late Triassic.
“Aetosaurs are a group of quadrupedal armored reptiles whose terrestrial ecology is inferred to include both herbivory and omnivory,” said a paleontologist at the University of Texas at Austin. William Reyes and his colleagues.
“They have achieved a nearly global geographic distribution, but are stratigraphically restricted to the Late Triassic.”
“Most species of wind dragons reach a total length of 2 to 6 meters (6.6 to 20 feet).”
dubbing Garsapelta Murerithe newly identified species grew up to 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) long.
This extinct animal lived in what is now the United States during the Middle Triassic period, about 218 million years ago.
Hypothetical reconstruction of Garsapelta Mureri: (a) Carapace seen from the back, and (bf) cross-sectional view of the carapace seen from the back. Cross-sectional views of (b) posterior neck and anterior trunk, (c) mid-trunk, (d) posterior trunk and sacrum, (e) anterior caudal region, and (f) mid-caudal region. Arrows indicate anatomical direction. A – Anterior, D – Dorsal, L – Lateral, M – Medial. Image credit: Jeffrey Martz / Reyes other., doi: 10.1002/ar.25379.
Its fossilized skeleton was discovered. Cooper canyon formation Located in Garza County, Texas.
It was recovered with an associated carapace containing elements of both the left and right sides of the body.
The discovery of Garsapelta Mureri “This provides new insights into interspecific variation in the carapace of etosaurs,” the paleontologists said.
“It is clear that the morphology of the lateral osteoderm determines the final topological position of the bone. Garsapelta Murerirecover it as a sister taxon of . Desmatostini”
“The similarities between the two are Garsapelta Mureri, Rioaribascus chamensisand the paratipothrasin The discoveries from Colorado's Eagle Basin indicate a biostratigraphic range that we believe is probably limited to Revuelto's putative holochronozone (215 to 207 million years ago), but It suggests that we are working on the emergence of a new group of wind dragons that may be just as old. The latest Adamanian. ”
William A. Reyes other. Garsapelta Mureri generation. Such. In November, a new species of wind dragon (archosaur: pseudosaur) was discovered in the middle Cooper Canyon Formation of the late Triassic (middle Norian) in the Dokum Group, Texas, USA, and the morphological characteristics of the wind dragon's carapace. its impact on our understanding of difference; anatomical records, published online on January 11, 2024. doi: 10.1002/ar.25379
TOKYO — Japan will attempt a precision landing on Friday, aiming to become the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the moon. This would be a boost for a space program that has been hit by a wave of setbacks and overshadowed by rival China.
was namedmoon sniper'', the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)'s spacecraft is attempting to land within 100 meters (328 feet) of its target, but JAXA says the technology is unprecedented and that it will It is said to be essential in the search for human habitability.
Japan is increasingly seeking to play a larger role in space, partnering with Washington to counter China's military and technological might.Japan boast In collaboration with many private space startup companies, astronaut To the moon as part of NASA's Artemis program.
However, JAXA has faced multiple setbacks, including launch failure In March, a new flagship rocket, the H3, was announced, aimed at matching cost competitiveness with private rocket providers like SpaceX.
JAXA's Smart Lander for Lunar Exploration (SLIM) spacecraft will begin its 20-minute touchdown phase on a one-way mission at midnight Saturday (15:00 GMT Friday), covering an area about two kinetic tracks on the lunar surface. Attempt to land at the target location. The slope of a crater just south of the moon's equator.
“No other country has achieved this. If Japan can prove that it has this technology, it will provide a huge advantage for future international missions like Artemis,” said Shinichiro Sakai, JAXA's SLIM project manager. said.
Chandrayaan 3 in India in August Had made The historic touchdown to the Moon's South Pole was a major technological feat considering the rugged terrain and underlines India's rise as a nation. Major players In space.
JAXA emphasizes that its high-precision technology will be a powerful tool in future exploration of the hilly lunar poles, which are considered a potential source of oxygen, fuel and water. Japan is also planning an unmanned lunar polar exploration jointly with India in 2025.
Professor Kazuto Saiki of Ritsumeikan University, who developed the SLIM near-infrared camera that analyzes lunar rocks after landing, says, “Japan cannot compete with the United States, China, and India in terms of resources when it comes to developing lunar surface projects.'' .
“We should focus on building popular technologies such as pinpoint landings and near-infrared cameras that foreign exploration projects aim to adopt.”
JAXA has twice landed on small asteroids, but landing on the moon is much more difficult due to gravity, as seen in many recent failures.
Last year, a Japanese probe to start ispace crashes into the moon RussiaThe Luna 25 followed suit. A lander from American startup Astrobotic suffered a fuel leak last week. Force Giving up a touchdown attempt.
“Mistakes happen, but Japan is a very experienced space power and has been conducting very complex space operations for many years,” said Bredin Bowen, an associate professor at the University of Leicester who specializes in space policy. To tell.
“Japan may not be as big as the old United States or the Soviet Union or today's China, but it has always been there in terms of capability and niche advanced technology.''
SLIM's high-precision landing “won't be a game changer,” but its demonstration and the construction of lightweight spacecraft that Japan has been pursuing could reduce the cost of each mission and bring moonshots to space agencies around the world. Bowen added that there is.
JAXA says it will take up to a month to verify whether SLIM achieved its high-precision goals after touchdown.
Upon landing, SLIM will also deploy two mini-probes, a hopping vehicle the size of a microwave oven and a wheeled rover the size of a baseball, to take photos of the spacecraft. The robot was jointly developed by technology giant Sony Group, toy maker Takara Tomy, and several Japanese universities.
Launch of the Peregrine Lunar Module on a Vulcan rocket on January 8th
APFootage / Alamy Stock Photo
The mission of the Hayabusa lander is over. The American company that built Astrobotic, a lunar lander whose plans failed, was unable to complete its trip to the moon due to a fuel leak, so it was brought back and burned in Earth's atmosphere.
What was wrong with the Hayabusa lander?
Just seven hours after launching on a Vulcan rocket on January 8, engineers noticed that Peregrine wasn't facing the right direction and its solar panels weren't charging the batteries that power its electronics. Shortly afterward, it was discovered that fuel was leaking from the aircraft. It was eventually determined that the oxidizer tank had ruptured, probably due to a stuck valve, and that the leak had generated a small amount of thrust, causing the probe to change direction. By the time everything was figured out, Peregrine had already lost too much fuel to reach the moon, let alone perform the maneuvers needed to land gently on the moon.
The peregrine falcon was in space for days, but what was it doing all that time?
Astrobotic's engineers were able to correct Peregrine's orientation, and once the solar panels were oriented in the correct direction, the battery was charged. This will allow Peregrine operators to perform a quick test ignition of the main engine and power on the onboard spacecraft, allowing them to better understand the spacecraft's operation in space and determine what went wrong. Helpful. They also remotely switched on some scientific instruments and made measurements of radiation in interplanetary space that could provide useful scientific insights. By operating the spacecraft for several days, Astrobotic will also be able to decide whether to extend its mission in space by changing from its planned moon landing, or continue on its way back to Earth. I was given time to do it.
Why did it have to be brought back to Earth rather than left in space?
Although the peregrine falcon could have survived a little longer in Earth orbit, there were some risks to leaving it there. Eventually, the spacecraft will run out of fuel completely and become essentially a cannonball flying uncontrollably around the Earth. This type of space debris can cause significant damage to operating satellites.a statement The Astrobotic article says: “Ultimately, we have to balance the risk of a damaged spacecraft causing problems with our own desire to extend Peregrine's life, operate the payload, and learn more about the spacecraft. .”
Wouldn't it be dangerous to bring it back to Earth?
It's actually much safer to return the spacecraft to Earth. Satellites are regularly deorbited in this way, usually burning up in the incredible heat they experience as they plummet through the atmosphere. The falcon was also carefully targeted towards the Pacific Ocean just east of Australia to minimize the risk of any surviving debris hitting populated areas.
What about the other things Peregrine was carrying?
In addition to scientific instruments, the spacecraft also carried two controversial payloads sent into space by a company called Celestis, which provides what is called a “commemorative spaceflight.” These two vessels of hers contained cremated human remains. Star Trek Creator Gene Roddenberry and actors James Doohan and Nichelle Nichols. It is unclear whether the capsule survived Earth's atmosphere and ended up in the ocean.
Why do missions to the moon continue to fail?
Indeed, this is the third mission to land on the moon that has failed in the last year, but that's only partially due to the difficulty of sending a probe into space and making a soft landing hundreds of thousands of kilometers away. Lunar landing attempts have also increased significantly, many using new equipment and protocols that have not yet been tested. While there are understandably some growing pains, more moon landings are planned in the future, and Astrobotic executives are already discussing plans to try again.
After more than a week in space, the doomed lunar lander met a violent end Thursday as it burned up in Earth’s atmosphere, ending its mission.
A private spacecraft named Peregrine was designed to travel to the moon and settle on its surface. However, shortly after launching into orbit on January 8, the lander suffered a severe propellant leak, forcing operators to abort the entire mission.
Astrobotic Technology, the Pittsburgh-based company that developed the lander, said Thursday that the limp spacecraft safely burned up in Earth’s atmosphere in a remote stretch of the South Pacific Ocean at about 4:04 p.m. ET. announced.
in Updates posted on XThe company confirmed it had lost contact with the spacecraft just before 4 p.m. ET, suggesting the lander had re-entered the atmosphere, but officials said they were “waiting for independent confirmation from a government agency.” ” he added.
An early failure left the Peregrine lander with no means of reaching the moon. Astrobotic’s team fought for nine days to save the spacecraft and its onboard equipment and extend the remainder of the mission.
Engineers were able to stabilize the spacecraft, but Astrobotic said last week it would not be possible to attempt a controlled landing on the moon.
“We applaud @Astrobotic’s perseverance,” NASA announced Tuesday. Statement posted on X.
The Peregrine mission attracted attention because it was the first American lunar lander launched into space in more than 50 years. If successful, Peregrine would also have become the first commercially developed spacecraft to land on the moon.
Besides NASA, the former Soviet Union, China, and India are the only countries to have successfully made a controlled landing, or “soft landing,” on the moon’s surface. Japan aims to join that elite club on Friday when it attempts to land its Smart Lander for Lunar Exploration (SLIM).
Peregrine’s mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Module Services Program, which was established to encourage private companies to develop new lunar landers and ultimately help NASA bring cargo and scientific equipment to the lunar surface. You can now hire this lander for transport.
Another Houston-based company, Intuitive Machines, plans to launch its own commercially developed lander next month as part of the same NASA effort.
The Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program is part of the agency’s Artemis program, with the goal of returning astronauts to the Moon over the next few years, eventually establishing regular flights to the Moon, and building a lunar base camp. It is said that NASA recently announced the postponement of two upcoming Artemis missions, pushing back a lunar circumnavigation flight that was scheduled to launch later this year to 2025 and pushing back Artemis’s first landing attempt to next year.
A neutron star is the collapsed core of a massive star
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg3005
Some 40,000 light-years away, a strange object could be either the heaviest neutron star or the lightest black hole ever seen, and it resides in a mysterious celestial void that astronomers have never directly observed. .
Neutron stars form when a star runs out of fuel and collapses due to gravity, creating a shock wave called a supernova and leaving behind an extremely dense core. Astrophysical calculations show that these nuclei must remain below a certain mass, about 2.2 times the mass of the Sun, or they will collapse further to form a black hole.
However, black holes have only been observed to have a mass more than five times that of the sun, leaving a gap in scale between neutron stars and black holes. Gravitational-wave observatories have observed several dense objects in this gap, but astronomers have never discovered them with conventional telescopes.
now, Ewan Barr Researchers at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy discovered an object with 2.5 times the mass of the Sun by observing pulsars orbiting around it. A pulsar is a neutron star that emits pulses of light at regular millisecond intervals due to a strong magnetic field.
As predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, pulsars emit light with great regularity, but very large nearby objects can distort these rhythms. Dr. Barr and his team were able to calculate the mass of the pulsar's partner by observing the pulsar's pulses for more than a year using his MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa.
“What we've discovered in this binary system appears to go beyond that [upper limit for neutron star mass]This suggests that there is some new physics going on here and that this is either a new type of star, or simply a black hole, the lightest stellar-mass black hole yet discovered. “There will be,” Barr said.
Pulsars are located in globular clusters, which are dense regions of stars and some rare objects that can pass close to each other. These unusual interactions could explain the mysterious object, Barr said.
If it's a black hole, researchers will be able to test theories of gravity that weren't possible before. “A pulsar is just a ridiculously accurate measuring device in orbit around a black hole, but it's not going anywhere. It's going to be around for the next billion years,” Barr says. “So this is an incredibly stable and natural test bed for investigating the physics of black holes.”
“If it's a neutron star, it would be more massive than any neutron star we've ever seen,” he says. Christine Dunn At Durham University, UK. “This actually tells us about the ultimate density that a star can support before it collapses under its own gravity and becomes a black hole. We need to understand the physics of matter at such extreme densities. I don't know what the limits are.”
Barr and his team plan to observe the pulsar with other telescopes over the next few years, looking for clues about what the object is. If it were a black hole, we would see the pulsar's orbit change over time, as the black hole dragged through spacetime around it, much like a ship dragging a small boat behind it. Or if it's a neutron star, more sensitive instruments might be able to detect the light.
Artist's thoughts on SLIM after landing on the moon
JAXA
Japan is preparing for its first moon landing. The Smart Lunar Survey Lander (SLIM) is scheduled to land on the lunar surface on January 19th. If all goes well, Japan will become the fifth country to land a probe on the moon, following the United States, Soviet Union, China and India.
SLIM launched in September 2023 and took a long, narrow path to the moon, making a steep descent to conserve fuel. It entered lunar orbit in December and has since taken images of the lunar surface and slowly lowered its altitude in preparation for landing.
This spacecraft's landing technique is so precise that it has been nicknamed the “Moon Sniper.” It is designed to match images from its onboard camera with data from other lunar rovers to determine its location and autonomously navigate to a precise landing site. “[It] “We can expect 20 minutes of breathless, numbing fear,” said Kenji Kushiki, one of the mission managers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). in a statement.
If successful, future missions will be equipped to land exactly where they want to land, rather than within a few dozen square kilometers of their desired spot, as is the case today. “Lunar orbiting satellites… have provided a large amount of high-resolution observation data of the lunar surface,” Kushiki said. “Thus, interest in lunar science and resource exploration has shifted from 'somewhere on the moon's surface' to 'that rock next to this particular crater.'”
When the spacecraft lands, it releases a pair of probes with new and strange ways to travel across the moon's surface. Lunar Expedition Vehicle-1 (LEV-1) is designed to fly around rather than roam on wheels like traditional rovers. LEV-2 is a sphere slightly smaller than a tennis ball that was designed by toy manufacturers to roll on the ground. take a picture. The lander itself also carries scientific instruments to survey the area around the crater that will be the target of the landing.
The landing is part of a large-scale international effort to explore the moon. India's Chandrayaan-3 lander reached the moon's surface in August 2023, but there were a series of failures. A lander sent by Japan's iSpace company crashed last April, Russia's Luna 25 had a similar accident in August, and more recently the US crashed. Astrobotic's Peregrine lander suffered a fuel leak and failed to reach the moon. If this mission is successful, it could be the moment when lunar exploration gets back on track.
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