A 37-Million-Year-Old 'Sabre-Toothed Tiger' Just Went Up For Auction

 A nearly 40-million-year-old skeleton belonging to what's popularly called a sabre-toothed tiger goes under the hammer next week in Geneva, a year after its discovery on a US ranch.

The skeleton, some 120 centimetres (nearly four feet) long, is anticipated to fetch between 60,000 and 80,000 Swiss francs (US$66,560 to $88,750; 55,300 to 73,750 euros) at auction on the holy day of obligation within the Swiss city.

"This fossil is outstanding, especially for its conservation: it's 37 million years old, and it's 90-per cent complete," Bernard Piguet, director of the Piguet firm, told AFP on Tuesday.

"The few missing bones were remade with a 3D printer," he added, with the skeleton reconstructed around a black metal frame.

Piguet said he was fascinated by the merger of "the extremely old with modern technologies".

The original bones are those of a Hoplophoneus. Not strictly a real member of the cat family, they're an extinct genus of the Nimravidae family and stalked around North America.

Such extinct predatory mammals are commonly called sabre-toothed tigers.

(Fabrice Coffrini/AFP)

"It was found in SD during the last excavation season, towards the tip of summer 2019," Swiss collector Yann Cuenin, who owns the handfuls of palaeontology lots on auction, told AFP.

"As in most finds, erosion had unearthed a part of the skeleton. While walking around his property, the ranch owner sawbones protruding of the bottom."

While the skeleton is that the star of the show, there are many other treasures from the past up for grabs, including ammolite, an opal-like organic gemstone, in reminder red and orange.

Measuring 40 cm long by 36 cm wide, the fossil from the Cretaceous period is 75 million years old and hails from the Canadian chain of mountains. it's estimated to fetch between 20,000 and 30,000 Swiss francs.

Jurassic Park enthusiasts may buy a theropod dinosaur tooth (2,200 to 2,800 francs), or, for 5,000 to 7,000 francs, a powerful 85-cm long fin from a mosasaur - a marine reptile that within the geological period was at the highest of the submarine organic phenomenon.

History versus art

Though dinosaur-mania began within us, it's grown in Europe in recent years. Next week's sale is that the second time such an auction has been held in Switzerland.

In September 2019, the skeleton of a dinosaur (Thescelosaurus neglectus), 66 million years old and three metres long, was purchased by a Swiss-resident collector for 225,000 francs.

Debate rages on the balance between the scientific value of such items and their worth on the open market.

Some palaeontologists insist animal or plant fossils don't seem to be decorative objects for collectors, but a witness to the evolution of life on Earth and thus scientific objects that should be studied so shared with the general public in museums.

(Fabrice Coffrini/AF

But Cuenin said: "If we're talking about the sabre-toothed tiger, as an example, it isn't a skeleton which is of major scientific interest, within the sense that it's something which is already known to science.

"We've found several dozen of them, individuals from the identical species. A fossil isn't just an easy scientific or technical object; it also has a creative value," he said.

Piguet added: "The museums are already well-stocked.

"I am all for museums, but I'm also in favour of objects living among us; for there to be collectors, for pieces to be bought and sold - that is what brings culture to life."

New “Flying-V” Plane Burns 20 Percent Less Fuel & Can Carry More Than 300 Passengers

  

Airlines are testing all forms of ways to create planes less of a haul on the environment. Virgin Atlantic recently used recycled waste to power a billboard flight, while Boeing and JetBlue have backed a shot to make hybrid-electric planes. The Netherlands ’ KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is taking a distinct approach.

It just partnered with a university to develop the “Flying-V,” a radical new airplane design that puts passenger seats inside the plane’s wings — and it could decrease the number of fuel needed for flights by a considerable 20 percent.

On Monday, KLM announced plans to collaborate with the Delft University of Technology on the school’s in-development Flying-V airplane design. And it doesn’t just put passengers within the plane’s wings — the fuel tanks and hold also will find a brand new home there.

Based on the researchers’ calculations, the new design should allow the Flying-V to move approximately the identical number of passengers as an Airbus A350 using 20 percent less fuel.

“We’ve been flying these tube and wing airplanes for many years now, but it looks as if the configuration is reaching a plateau in terms of energy efficiency,” TU Delft project leader Roelof Vos told CNN. “The new configuration that we propose realizes some synergy between the fuselage and also the wing. The fuselage actively contributes to the lift of the airplane, and creates less aerodynamic drag.”

There's 400,000 Pounds Of Trash On The Moon

  The Moon’s surface is strewn with many man-made items, from spacecraft to bags of urine to colossal plaques. Most are spacecraft, quite 70 vehicles altogether dispersed over the lunar surface.

What do the subsequent items have in common?

5 American flags

12 pairs of shoes

96 bags of urine, feces, and vomit

A photograph of Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke’s family

If you guessed that these are all among the things on the moon, then you're correct. In total, the moon has over 400,000 pounds of artificial material, and that we humans constantly boost that pile. Humans crash probes into the moon—a tedious method for bringing unmanned missions to an in-depth. And these crashes often leave behind lots of trash.

But is that this trash a controversy, or simply the price of doing space travel?

Weighing in is Jerry Linenger, a former NASA astronaut. He was the only real American on board the Russian orbiter Mir, which survived the worst fire in space exploration history. He’s also the author of “Off the earth.”

In addition to the things mentions above, here’s a rough list of stuff on the moon, in line with The Atlantic.

More than 70 spacecraft, including rovers, modules, and crashed orbiters

TV cameras

Film magazines

Numerous Hasselblad cameras and accessories

Several improvised javelins

Various hammers, tongs, rakes, and shovels

Backpacks

Insulating blankets

Utility towels

Used wet wipes

Personal hygiene kits

Empty packages of space food

A feather from Baggin, the Air Force Academy’s mascot falcon, accustomed conduct Apollo 15’s famous “hammer-feather drop” experiment

A small aluminum sculpture, a tribute to the American and Soviet “fallen astronauts” who died within the space race — left by the crew of Apollo 15

A patch from the never-launched Apollo 1 mission, which ended prematurely when flames engulfed the module during a 1967 work out, killing three U.S. astronauts

A small silicon disk bearing goodwill messages from 73 world leaders, and left on the moon by the crew of Apollo 11

A silver pin, left by Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean

A medal honoring Soviet cosmonauts Vladimir Komarov and astronaut

A cast golden offering left by the crew of Apollo 11

A Modem With a Tiny Mirror Cabinet Could Help Connect The Quantum Internet

  Quantum physics promises huge advances not just in quantum computing but also during a quantum internet – a next-generation framework for transferring data from one place to a different. Scientists have now invented technology suitable for a quantum modem that might act as a network gateway.

What makes a quantum internet superior to the regular, existing internet that you're reading this through is security: interfering with the info being transmitted with quantum techniques would essentially break the connection. It's as near unhackable as you'll possibly get.

As with trying to provide practical, commercial quantum computers though, turning the quantum internet from potential to reality is taking time – not surprising, considering the incredibly complex physics involved. A quantum modem can be a really important success for the technology.

"In the long run, a quantum internet might be wont to connect quantum computers located in several places, which might considerably increase their computing power!" says physicist Andreas Reiserer, from the Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck Institute in Germany.

Quantum computing is made round the idea of qubits, which unlike classical computer bits can store several states simultaneously. The new research focuses on connecting stationary qubits in a very quantum computer with moving qubits traveling between these machines.

That's a troublesome challenge when you're handling information that's stored as delicately because it is with natural philosophy. during this setup, light photons are wont to store quantum data in transit, photons that are precisely tuned to the infrared wavelength of laser light employed in today's communication systems.

That gives the new system a key advantage therein it'll work with existing fiber-optic networks, which might make a quantum upgrade rather more straightforward when the technology is prepared to roll out.

In working out the way to get stored qubits at rest reacting good with moving infrared photons, the researchers determined that the element erbium and its electrons were best fitted to the duty – but erbium atoms aren't naturally inclined to form the required jump between two states. to form that possible, the static erbium atoms and therefore the moving infrared photons are essentially locked up together until they get along.

Working out the way to try this required a careful calculation of the space and conditions needed. Inside their modem, the researchers installed a miniature mirrored cabinet around a crystal manufactured from a yttrium silicate compound. This founded was then was cooled to minus 271 degrees Celsius (minus 455.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

The modem mirror cabinet. (Max Planck Institute)

The cooled crystal kept the erbium atoms stable enough to force an interaction, while the mirrors bounced the infrared photons around tens of thousands of times – essentially creating tens of thousands of chances for the mandatory jump to happen. The mirrors make the system 60 times faster and far more efficient than it'd be otherwise, the researchers say.

Once that jump between the 2 states has been made, the data are often passed someplace else. That data transfer raises a full new set of problems to be overcome, but scientists are busy acting on solutions.

As with many advances in quantum technology, it's visiting take a long time to induce this from the lab into actual real-world systems, but it's another significant revolution – and also the same study could also help in quantum processors and quantum repeaters that pass data over longer distances.

"Our system thus enables efficient interactions between light and solid-state qubits while preserving the delicate quantum properties of the latter to an unprecedented degree," write the researchers in their published paper.

2 °C of Warming Could Open The Floodgates For 230 Billion Tons of Carbon to Escape

  Most people comprehend the vast stores of carbon in our atmosphere, and yet beneath our feet, Earth's soil contains nearly 3 times the maximum amount of CO2, absorbing roughly 1 / 4 of all human emissions annually.

If the planet warms by 2 °C or more, we risk turning that vital sink into a carbon spout.

An updated model on carbon soil turnover has found such warming could release 230 billion loads of greenhouse emission, give or take 50 billion tons. and that is just from the highest meter of soil, which has roughly the identical amount of carbon as our atmosphere.

That number may be a little under what China has emitted since 1900 and slightly but double what u.  s. has emitted since the identical year.

Restricting a model to such shallow depths might sound like an oversight initially, but by confining their measurements, scientists have made it easier to model changes in soil turnover. This has also helped halve the uncertainty produced by other similar models.

"We have reduced the uncertainty during this temperature change response, which is significant to calculating an accurate global carbon budget and successfully meeting Paris Agreement targets," says climate scientist Peter Cox from the worldwide Systems Institute.

While warming temperatures are known to extend decomposition and shorten the number of your time carbon spends within the soil, it's still not clear how sensitive this technique is to temperature changes. 

In fact, the way soil responds to our rapidly changing world is one in every of the best uncertainties in our current climate models. And while the new research is not the worst prediction out there, it's still not excellent news.

"Our study rules out the foremost extreme projections – but nonetheless suggests substantial soil carbon losses because of global climate change at only 2°C warmings, and this does not even include losses of deeper permafrost carbon," says climate modeler Sarah Chadburn from the University of Exeter. 

Nor does it include other greenhouse gases, like methane, which are stored within the soil and which are again and again more powerful as a worldwide warmer than dioxide.

Of course, not all soil holds an identical amount of carbon, and while some parts of the globe hold the potential to extend their soil sink, other parts aren't so lucky.

Most soil carbon is stored in peatland or permafrost, and unfortunately, these common Arctic habitats are on the frontlines of worldwide warming.

Today, with rapid permafrost collapse underway, scientists are worried we are going to soon hit a tipping point, where vast stores of carbon trigger more melt and increased emissions at a runaway pace. 

Recent research, as an example, has found that as permafrost melts, rising temperatures are stimulating plant growth, and these spreading roots are 'priming' permafrost for further thawing.  

Such minute interactions are easy to overlook in such a sophisticated system, but they may blow holes in our current climate goals.

"Climate–carbon cycle feedbacks must be understood and quantified if the Paris Agreement targets are to be met," researchers of the new model write.

"Changes in soil carbon represent a very large uncertainty, with the potential to significantly reduce the carbon take into account climate stabilization at 2 °C heating."

The carbon in Earth's soil has been build up for millennia. If we act, we would not latch on back again.

What we do about it now will determine our future.

How Would You React If We Discovered Alien Life?

  Experts weigh in on what the detection of other life forms might mean to humanity.

or quite a century, from George Melies’ a visit to the Moon to Stephen Spielberg’s E.T. and shut Encounters to the present summer’s blockbuster sequel to July 4, mass media, and also the general public, have pondered what's going to happen if we ever came into contact with extraterrestrial life forms. Carl Sagan’s book Contact, and Jodie Foster’s movie of the identical name, explores one possible scenario within which an exploration for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) scientist (played by Foster) discovers a sign repeating a sequence of prime numbers originating from star system Vega, the 5th brightest star visible from Earth. whether or not Contact’s version of an alien encounter is more likely than that presented in Spielberg’s E.T., the probabilities are worth pondering.

=And yet experts believe that the percentages of receiving a radio transmission composed of prime numbers or encountering intelligent extraterrestrial life within the near future are “astronomical.” even with Hillary Clinton’s promise that if elected President, she would open up the “X-files” (Area 51).

But the chances are also increasing because of continuing advances in technology and money. At a news conference held in April in big apple City, Russian billionaire and Breakthrough Prize co-founder Yuri Milner, together with a famed physicist, announced Breakthrough Starshot, a 20-year voyage to the Alpha Centauri star system. Should the existence of planets within the binary star system be confirmed, Starshot could provide us with the simplest measurements of an exoplanet atmosphere we could ever hope to urge this century. Milner will spend $100 million dollars to fund the project. Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is on the project’s board of directors.

The goal of NASA’s Kepler Mission was to search out terrestrial planets within the habitable zone of stars both near and much where liquid water and possibly life might exist. To date, Kepler has confirmed the existence of two,337 exoplanets, including 1,284 new planets announced as of this writing. in a very handout issued by NASA, chief scientist Ellen Stofan, said, “This announcement quite doubles the number of confirmed planets from Kepler. this offers us hope that somewhere out there, around a star very like ours, we will eventually discover another Earth.”

But what would happen if we discovered life beyond Earth?

Christof Koch, president, and chief scientific officer of the Allen Institute for neuroscience, believe most people are excited to be told that there's intelligent life out there. “For some ‘contact” would be a wish come true and fill us with awe. except for others, it might raise concerns. One can’t assume that alien cultures are by definition benevolent,” Koch says. “If we glance at the history of our world, lesser civilizations were often destroyed by more advanced ones. Would the identical happen to us if we encountered a complicated alien civilization?” Hawking has warned against sending messages out into space for this very reason.

Koch has devoted his life to defining what consciousness is whether or not it's the net, robots, animals, etc. Since it's doubtful that our first contact is going to be with humans from another planet it's important for us to know what consciousness is so we are able to better understand what we do discover as we explore space. “The first discovery would probably be bacteria which could excite some scientists but not the final public. Another scenario may well be a radio wave whose origin would be questioned. Was it a deliberate signal sent to us or is it random noise that will be explained scientifically? I'm not holding my breath for a sign that has prime numbers,” Koch says.

Mary A. Voytek is that the senior scientist and head of NASA’s Astrobiology Program who started Nexus for Exoplanet System Science to go looking for all times on exoplanets. She notes that NASA scientists are currently staring at the foremost extreme conditions on Earth to raised understand what conditions can support life throughout the universe.  “If we will determine what makes a habitable planet on Earth it'll help guide us to seem for conditions within the universe,” she says. Voytek notes that NASA acknowledges that the invention of life has significance beyond science: “In order to totally understand the societal implications, we must discuss with the experts-scholars in sociology and therefore the humanities likewise as theologians.”

“When I give lectures about my work, most people are excited about the likelihood of the invention of extraterrestrial life,” Voytek says. “This is nothing new… the traditional Greek atomists within the fourth century B.C. wrote about it. there's a quote by Democritus that I favor to cite. ‘To consider the planet because the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd on assert that in a whole field sown with millet just one grain will grow.’”

Douglas Vakoch, president of Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI) has devoted much of his career with SETI to exploring what would happen on first contact and the way we could even initiate it through interstellar messages. He says the bulk of individuals believe that intelligent life is widespread within the cosmos.e agrees that a discovery of something sort of a radio emission would end in arguments, in addition to a fading lack of interest thanks to time. “It could take decades or maybe many years for us to urge a response from a symbol we transfer. For those that are accustomed to instant communication, this may be frustrating,” Vakoch says.

Others think we’ll have a more dramatic experience. Susan Schneider, a professor of philosophy and scientific discipline at the University of Connecticut and a fellow of the middle for Theological Inquiry, believes that if we do find intelligent life, it'll possibly be within the sort of super-intelligent computer science. “For some people, this could be hard to simply accept. Discovering a civilization that's now not biological would be scary for us,” But Schneider is optimistic that almost all people will find the invention of benevolent intelligent life exciting. “People are excited by the unknown. and therefore the discovery of a brand new civilization may need many potential benefits. Perhaps a complicated civilization will share their knowledge with us,” Schneider says. The Catholic Church has come a protracted way since the times of Galileo. Pope Francis made headlines when he said he would baptize Martians. Many were surprised at the Pope’s remarks, but the Vatican has been positive about aliens for several years. Father Jose Gabriel Funes, a priest and an astronomer, views aliens as brothers and said the Church has no problem with the concept of intelligent life within the cosmos. Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno is that the first clergyman to win the Carl Sagan Medal and also the current president of the Vatican Observatory Foundation. in an exceedingly 2014 article within the Christian Post, Consolmagno said “the general public won't be too surprised when life on other planets is eventually discovered and can react in much the identical way it did when news broke within the ’90s that there are other planets orbiting distant stars.”

A similar view is held by Orthodox Jews. In an e-mail to me, Rabbi Ben Tzion Krasnianski, director of Chabad of the Upperside of Manhattan, wrote, “Jews believe other life forms. The universe is populated with an infinite amount of them. they're not physical, however, rather they're angels who are spiritually conscious beings that are beyond anything we could imagine. The Talmud says one angel’s mind is that the equivalent of a 3rd of the world’s population’s intelligence combined. For us, it’s no surprise that we aren't alone within the larger universe.”

Vakoch said people must detain mind that we are only at the start of exploration. “We have just started looking. it's only been some hundred years that we’ve been a technologically advanced society. That’s a really touch of your time in our universe.”

On Monday You'll Be Able to See The Full Moon Pass Through Earth's Shadow

 Skywatchers admiring November's phase of the moon also will get to determine another treat: a penumbral eclipse, when the Moon passes through Earth's outer shadow, on Monday, November 30, in line with NASA.

The Moon is at its fullest for less than a flash — on Monday, that happens at 4:30 am EST (9:30 UTC) — but the Moon will appear full for 3 days: from Saturday night through Tuesday morning (November 28 to December 1).  

Meanwhile, sky gazers have to remember thrice to catch the penumbral eclipse: It starts before the total moon at 2:32 am EST (7:32 UTC); reaches its maximum at 4:42 am EST (9:42 UTC) when 83 percent of the Moon are covered with Earth's faint shadow; and ends at 6:53 a.m. EST (11:53 UTC) Monday morning, consistent with timeanddate.com. 

Penumbral eclipses are different from total or partial eclipses. During a complete eclipse, Earth passes directly between the sun and moon, blocking the sun's light from reaching our natural satellite.

In contrast, during an eclipse, the Moon passes through a part of Earth's inner dark shadow, referred to as the umbra.

Finally, in an exceedingly penumbral eclipse, the Moon passes through a part of Earth's outer, fainter penumbral shadow, consistent with Space.com, a Live Science sister site. 

Unless you are a seasoned skywatcher, it should be challenging to determine November's penumbral eclipse, which is able to be visible in North America (as long as there aren't cloudy skies), because the penumbral shadow will appear as a dim veil.

"The dimming of the moon during this eclipse will probably not be noticeable without instrumentation, except for spacecraft at the moon like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), the reduction in alternative energy are going to be noticeable," NASA wrote in an exceeding statement.

November's phase of the moon, known to several because the beaver moon, comes late within the month this year because October had two full moons; the second moon, years, was the primary time in 76 years that a phase of the moon was visible across the US on Halloween.

Other names for November's full-of-the-moon include the cold moon, frost moon, winter moon, oak moon, moon before Yule, and child moon.

The full moon will be celebrated during Kartik Purnima (a Hindu, Sikh, and Jain cultural festival, celebrated differently by each culture), Karthika Deepam (a festival of lights observed by some Hindus), Tazaungdaing Festival Moon (observed by Buddhists in Myanmar, formerly Burma), and Ill Poya (celebrated in Sri Lanka), NASA reported. 

The beaver moon is that the last phase of the moon before the solstice, the shortest day of sunlight within the hemisphere, which falls on December 21 this year.

Other celestial sightings to appear in late November and early December include "Jupiter and Saturn, [which] will appear to gradually shift closer to every other, appearing nearer than the apparent diameter of the Moon from December 17 to 25," NASA reported.

"They will appear at their closest, about one-fifth the diameter of the Moon, on December 21, 2020."

People with backyard telescopes should be able to see Jupiter's four bright moons: Ganymede, Callisto, Europa, and Io, and even Saturn's brightly illuminated rings and Titan, its largest moon.

"Seeing Jupiter and Saturn so near one another should appear spectacular by telescope and with the optic," NASA said.

To people who miss November's moon, they'll always decide to see the last full phase of the moon of 2020, which can illumine the night sky at 10:28 pm EST on December 29 (3:28 UTC on December 30).