Science world

 According to crazy conspiracy theorists, who believe the mythical planet will appear within the skies on Saturday, NASA should be looking to wipe out Nibiru with a W.M.D. to avoid wasting Earth from death and destruction. Planet X believers claim the massive planet, also referred to as Planet X, will pass Earth at four million miles away in October, but the vast size of it'll cause our poles to modify and large seismic activity thanks to the gravity. And Christian theorists claim the arrival of Nibiru from Saturday, September 23 indicates The Rapture is on the point of start before the Second Coming of Christ. NASA has reassured us Nibiru could be a massive online hoax, however, many conspiracy theorists continue claiming a large hide is underway and world leaders are preparing to cover away in bunkers while the remainder folks perish. Some have even outlandishly claimed online that NASA should be looking to “nuke” Nibiru before it gets here. One online forum user posted: “Isn’t t...

 In most countries, people have a belief about where they'd find themselves if they dug their way through the middle of the planet and popped abreast of the opposite side. For people within the USA, they think it’s China. For people within the UK, they think it’s Australia. Australians think it's somewhere in Europe and hope it isn't the united kingdom because the weather is just too terrible there. But prepare to readjust your childhood belief, as this interactive map will show you where you'd really find yourself if you were to dig your way through the world and somehow aren't getting burned to death by the core, or crushed by the extraordinary pressure. If you're within the UK, sorry, don't pack a hat with corks on. One, it's offensive, and two, you are going to finish up within the ocean just off the south-east coast of recent Zealand, not Australia like you have been taught.  In fact, there aren't many places in Europe it's safe to dig down ...

 Water on the moon could also be more abundant and accessible than previously thought, which may be excellent news for future astronauts. Paul Hayne at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and his team used camera images and temperature measurements taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to map cold, permanently shadowed regions on the moon, which are thought to be the places possibly to contain ice because of their lack of exposure to sunlight. While there has been any evidence for the presence of water on the moon, these “cold traps” were previously thought to be restricted to deep, kilometers-wide craters. However, the team found that there are micro-cold traps – areas at the meter and millimeter-scale that are permanently shadowed and then could contain more accessible ice. Altogether, the researchers estimate that cold traps occupy about 40,000 square kilometers or roughly 0.1 percent of the moon’s surface. “We’re seeing billions and billions of those cold traps at scale...

 When the EU Space Agency’s Philae lander arrived on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko – also called comet 67P – it bounced twice before reaching its final resting place. Now researchers have found the placement of the second bounce, which exposed the strange ice beneath the comet’s surface. The Philae lander was carried to 67P aboard the Rosetta orbiter, which launched in 2004 and fell upon the comet in 2014. When Philae was dropped to the surface, the harpoons designed to carry it in situ didn’t fire, therefore the lander bounced. the situation of the primary bounce and therefore the lander’s final resting place were both found, but we didn’t know where the second bounce materialized until now. “I think it’s one in all the foremost positive things that happened on the mission, that it bounced because we managed to induce science from three locations on the comet,” says Laurence O’Rourke, a member of ESA’s Rosetta team. O’Rourke and his colleagues found the second bounce site by...

 Titan, the already pretty weird moon of Saturn, just got a touch bit weirder. Astronomers have detected Cyclopropenylidene (C3H2) in its atmosphere - a particularly rare carbon-based molecule that's so reactive, it can only exist on Earth in laboratory conditions. In fact, it is so rare that it's never before been detected in an environment, within the system, or elsewhere. the sole another place it can remain stable is that the cold innocent of the part. But it's going to be a building block for more complex organic molecules that would someday cause life. "We think about Titan as a real-life laboratory where we are able to see similar chemistry thereto of ancient Earth when life was control here," said astrobiologist Melissa Trainer of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, one in every one of the chief scientists set to research the moon within the upcoming Dragonfly mission launching in 2027. "We'll be trying to find bigger molecules than C3H2, but ...

 Exercise might prevent some sorts of cancer from growing and spreading, and while scientists still aren't sure why that's, new research on mice offers a possible explanation. After intense physical activity, elevated levels of certain metabolites, like lactate, maybe 'feeding' important immune cells in our blood. The results are mainly supported experiments with mice, but preliminary tests in male humans suggest an identical mechanism may be at play. "Our research shows that exercise affects the assembly of several molecules and metabolites that activate cancer-fighting immune cells and thereby inhibit cancer growth," says Helene Rundqvist, a cancer researcher at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. Past research has shown that exercise is linked to a rather lower risk of tumours within the bladder, breast, colon, kidney and stomach and that we have strong clinical evidence that physical movement can help some patients cope and recover. it would even extend t...

 Bats have long endured a foul reputation, even before COVID-19 emerged. These highly mobile creatures that sleep in clustered colonies are well-known reservoirs of viruses, including coronaviruses, that, as we have seen, can spill over into humans. But these innocent animals are unfairly maligned. they're important pollinators and pest controllers. And when bats are feeling sick, new research shows they naturally display their own type of social distancing behaviours, the same as the measures we've had to adapt to slow the spread of COVID-19. The study had scientists tagging a bunch of untamed vampire bats from a colony in Lamanai, Belize, and tracking their social encounters every few seconds over a pair of days. after they injected the bats with a substance that triggered their immune systems, the 'sick' bats clearly changed their behaviour and have become less social. "In the wild, [we observed] vampire bats – which are highly social animals – keep their distan...

 Owls are one in every of the rare avian predators that catch their prey by night, and new research suggests that there is something special within the way the DNA molecules in their eyes are packaged, giving them a strong visual advantage within the dark. Through the method of natural action, the new study proposes that the DNA within the retinal cells of owls may are put together in such how that it acts as a kind of lens or vision enhancer, improving eyesight during the night. The unusual trait hasn't been seen in birds before, which hints that owls have gone it alone on this particular evolutionary path, a minimum of among birds. the bulk of birds are diurnal like we are – is most active within the day and sleeping it all off in the dark. "In the ancestral branch of the owls, we found traces of positive selection within the evolution of genes functionally associated with seeing, especially to phototransduction, and to chromosome packaging," write the researchers in th...

 Across the globe, immunologists who retooled their labs to hitch the fight against SARS-CoV-2 are furiously trying to clarify why some people get so sick while others recover unscathed. The pace is dizzying, but some clear trends have emerged. One area of focus has been the assembly of antibodies – powerful proteins capable of disabling and killing invading pathogens like viruses. Of great concern has been the sporadic identification of so-called autoreactive antibodies that, rather than targeting disease-causing microbes, target the tissues of people full of severe cases of COVID-19. Early studies implicated these autoantibodies in dangerous blood clots forming in patients admitted to medical aid. More recently, they need been linked to severe disease by inactivating critical components of viral immune defenses during a significant fraction of patients with severe disease. As an immunologist within the Lowance Center for Human Immunology at Emory University, I've got been investi...

 It's official. There's water on the Moon. We've thought that there was for over a decade, supported detections described back in 2009, but there was room for interpretation within the wavelengths used. Now, employing a different wavelength unique to water, scientists report the primary unambiguous detection. Those 2009 conclusions were apparently on the money. The ambiguity arose because the 2009 detections were made within the 3-micrometre infrared band. At this wavelength, there have been two possibilities - water, or another hydroxyl compound comprising hydrogen and oxygen. Led by astronomer Casey Honniball of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre, a team of scientists decided to appear into the wavelength that would confirm or overturn those findings. The 6-micrometre infrared band should show a line which will only be created by two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom - what's called the H-O-H bend vibration. But actually making an unambiguous detection in this band...

 Scientists have found a brand new thanks to structure carbon at the nanoscale, making a fabric that's superior to diamond on the strength-to-density ratio. While the small carbon lattice has been fabricated and tested within the lab, it is a very good distance of practical use. But this new approach could help us build stronger and lighter materials within the future - which are some things that are of great interest to industries like aerospace and aviation.  What we're talking about here are some things called nanolattices - porous structures just like the one within the image above that's made from three-dimensional carbon struts and braces. thanks to their unique structure, they're incredibly strong and light-weight. Usually, these nanolattices are based around a cylindrical framework (they're called beam-nanolattices). But the team has now created plate-nanolattices, structures based around tiny plates. This subtle shift might not sound like much, but the rese...

 Our planet is continually bathed within the winds coming off the blistering sphere at the center of our scheme. But while the Sun itself is so ridiculously hot, once the solar winds reach Earth, they're hotter than they must be - and that we might finally know why. We know that particles making up the plasma of the Sun's heliosphere cool as they unfolded. the matter is that they appear to require their sweet time doing so, dropping in temperature far slower than models predict. "People are studying the solar radiation since its discovery in 1959, but there are many important properties of this plasma which are still not well understood," says physicist Stas Boldyrev from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. "Initially, researchers thought the solar radiation needs to calm down very rapidly because it expands from the Sun, but satellite measurements show that because it reaches the planet, its temperature is 10 times larger than expected." The research team ...

 Engineers have developed a semi-transparent photovoltaic cell that provides a viable level of efficiency, and it'd get us closer to a future where windows that double up as solar panels could transform both architecture and energy production. Two square meters (around 22 square feet) of the next-gen perovskite solar cells (PSCs) would be enough to come up with about the maximum amount electricity as a regular electrical device, in keeping with the most recent study – within the region of 140 watts per meter, if tinted to the identical degree as current glazed commercial windows. Solar cell windows are something researchers are functioning on for years, but until now nobody has really hit the sweet spot in terms of efficiency, stability, and value. The team behind the new project says they're closer than ever to doing just that. "Rooftop solar contains a conversion efficiency of between 15 and 20 percent," says materials chemist Jacek Jasieniak, from Monash University...

 The quality and complexity of dreams appear to vary with our stages of sleep, per a replacement analysis. Before the twenty-first century, we accustomed think dreams only occurred during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, but more modern research shows people sometimes recall dreams even once they are woken from non-REM stages of sleep.  Whether these two kinds of dreaming are inherently different are a few things neuroscientists are still trying to work out.   When patients are woken during slumber, research shows they'll usually recall elaborate, vivid, and emotional story-like dreams. In contrast, those woken during non-REM stages remember their dreams less, and also the dreams themselves tend to be more thought-like. These are important findings, but they're also supported by subjective reports. REM dreams are often described in additional words, for example, but when the length of the outline is controlled for, differences in elaboration disappear or are highly di...

 Flights are grounded. Fewer trains are running. time of day is gone. the globe - particularly in cities - is looking drastically different during the continued coronavirus pandemic. According to seismologists, that drastic reduction in human hustle and bustle is causing the planet to maneuver substantially less. the world is 'standing still'. Thomas Lecocq, a geologist, and seismologist at the Royal Observatory in Belgium noticed that the country's capital Brussels is experiencing a 30 to 50 percent reduction in ambient seismic noise since the lockdowns began, as CNN reports. That means data collected by seismologists is becoming more accurate, capable of detecting even the littlest tremors - despite the actual fact that a lot of the scientific instruments in use today are near city centers. "You'll get a symbol with less noise on top, allowing you to squeeze a touch more information out of these events," Andy Frassetto, a seismologist at the Incorporated Res...

A nova may be a dramatic episode within the lifetime of a binary pair of stars. It's an explosion of bright light that may last weeks or perhaps months. And though they are not exactly rare - there are about 10 every year within the galaxy - astronomers haven't watched one from start to end. Until now. A nova occurs in an exceedingly close binary system when one amongst the celebs has had its red giant star phase. That star leaves behind a remnant white dwarf star. When the star and its partner become close enough, the large gravitational pull of the white dwarf star draws material, mostly hydrogen, from the opposite star. That hydrogen accretes onto the surface of the white dwarf star, forming a skinny atmosphere. The white dwarf star heats the hydrogen, and eventually, the pressure level is extremely high, and fusion is ignited. Not just any fusion: rapid, runaway fusion. Artist's impression of a nova eruption, showing the star accreting matter from its companion. (Nova_b...

  As humans stuck on an orbiting planet, we're somewhat limited by our point of view. Looking up at the night sky, we can see our closest neighbor, the Moon, shining back at us, but have you ever wondered what we must look like from our satellite? Planetary scientist James O'Donoghue has now held up a mirror for us all to see the truth. Using real NASA imagery and positional data along with lunar topography imagery, the former NASA employee has created a computer-generated, high-resolution video of what Earth looks like from the Moon, while also showing us what the Moon looks like from Earth at the same time. With every frame of the video representing 15 minutes of actual time, the final product encompasses the entire month of April 2020 (in CGI form, at least), and allows us a cosmic perspective the likes of which we've never seen before. Dr James O'Donoghue ✔ @physicsJ Made in isolation, depicting isolation. Here's how Earth looks from the Moon & how Moon look...