Science Thread

[chrisp65]

 

asteroid will pass closer to the earth than the moon, 9:00pm this evening

[Ghost]

[Wainy316]

Does anybody have any genuine scientific knowledge or could it be that everything we're told is lies? How would we be any the wiser?

[hogso]

Really love this story

 

 

Clue to earthquake lightning mystery

Mysterious lightning flashes that appear to predict earthquakes could be sparked by movements in the ground below, US scientists say.

Unidentified glowing objects were spotted moments before major quakes in China and Italy recently.

 

These flickers could be triggered by shifting soil layers which generate huge electrical charge, say scientists.

Using a tub of plain kitchen flour, they discovered an entirely new physical phenomenon.

They announced their findings at the American Physical Society meeting in Denver.

 

"Our first suspicion was this has got to be a mistake. There must be something stupid we are doing," said Professor Troy Shinbrot, of Rutgers University, New Jersey.

 

"We took a tupperware container filled with flour, tipped it back and forth until cracks appeared, and it produced 200 volts of charge.

 

"There isn't a mechanism I know that can explain this. It seems to be new physics. "

...

 

Stories of "earthquake lights" have been recorded for 300 years, but were typically dismissed by scientists as hearsay, or fodder for UFO enthusiasts.

 

However in recent decades - and with the advent of YouTube - sightings of "clear-sky lightning" have been captured, analysed, and confirmed by scientists.

 

Article

Edited March 6, 2014 by hogso

[Nigel]

 

asteroid will pass closer to the earth than the moon, 9:00pm this evening

Was going to post this myself.  Shows just how susceptible we are to a major problem in the future.

 

Its quite alarming to know that a major collision would most probably come out of nowhere too!

Edited March 6, 2014 by Nigel

[AVFC_Hitz]

I came in here to learn how to stick extacy up me arse. I am disappoint.

[Xann]

If it's a pill? Push it up your fart pipe with your longest finger.

 

If it's powder? Wrap it in a rizla. Push it up your fart pipe with your longest finger.

 

Wash hands.

 

Don't poo for a bit.

 

Next Week: Stable superconductivity at room temperature.

[AVFCforever1991]

It absorbs much faster that way. So I'm told...

[Nigel]

 

Did dark matter kill the dinosaurs?

The Solar System's periodic passage through a 'dark disk' on the galactic plane could trigger comet bombardments that would cause mass extinctions.

• Elizabeth Gibney

07 March 2014

Article tools Rights & Permissions

Mark Stevenson/Stocktrek Images/Corbis

Mass extinctions such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs seem to happen with regularity, pointing to possible cosmic causes.

A thin disk of dark matter running through the Galaxy might be behind the large meteorite strikes that are thought to be responsible for some of Earth’s mass extinctions, including that of the dinosaurs, two theoretical physicists have proposed.

• Grey wolf's return sparks debate over predators' role in ecosystems
• Sun's passage through dark-matter disk could trigger mass extinctions
• Mathematicians' brains respond to beautiful equations as they do to art

The model is based on a hypothetical form of dark matter described by the authors and their collaborators last year^{1, 2} as a means to solve a separate cosmic conundrum. The existence of such a 'dark disk' could be tested soon by astronomical observations.

Mario Livio, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, who was not involved in the research, says that the latest idea, which brings together two speculative and very different theories, is “very interesting”, even if the evidence supporting it is far from compelling.

Meteorites regularly pepper Earth's surface. Thirty years ago, physicists suggested that this bombardment intensifies cyclically, pointing to some underlying cosmic cause. One proposed explanation is that the Sun has an as-yet-undetected companion star, dubbed ‘Nemesis’ or ‘Death Star’, that regularly swings by, sending comets from the remote Oort cloud flying into the inner Solar System^{3, 4}.

Diagram by Nature, Milky Way impression by C. Carreau-ESA

The Sun follows a snaking path as it circles the Milky Way.

In the latest paper,  theoretical physicists Lisa Randall and Matthew Reece, of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reignite another proposal^{5, 6}, which puts the supposed periodicity down to the way the Sun — and the Solar System with it — move inside the Milky Way. As the Sun follows the swirling motion of the Galaxy's arms, circling around the galactic centre, it also moves up and down, periodically crossing the plane that cuts the Galaxy into a top and a bottom half like the two bread slices in a sandwich. The authors suggest that as the Sun oscillates up and down,  it crosses a denser layer of dark matter — like the ham in the middle — causing a gravitational push and pull that disturbs comets in the Oort cloud.

Previous models could not account for a gravitational force strong enough to cause the effect. But Randall and Reece show that a thin disk of dark matter at the centre of the Galaxy could do exactly that, causing comet storms with a periodicity of about 35 million years. This would match some weak statistical evidence found in recent surveys of impact craters. Their paper is due to appear in Physical Review Letters⁷.

Dark matter is usually thought to be very weakly interacting and thus unable to settle into such a disk. But the authors suggest that a small fraction of dark matter could behave very differently. Last year, they developed a theory of 'dissipative dark matter' in an attempt to explain dark-matter-like signals from the Galaxy's centre seen by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope⁸. Their model yields a dark disk about 35 light years (10 parsecs) thick, with a density of about 1 solar mass per square light year (10 solar masses per square parsec) — dense enough to trigger periodic comet showers.

Evidence for a 35-million-year cycle, based on the record of impact craters, is itself “sketchy”, says Randall. Fluctuations in the crater record mean that searches for periodicity are always likely to throw up some correlations, she says. So she and Reece flipped the problem around and predicted what the period would be, on the basis of their model. “If you then find a match it has much more statistical significance than it would otherwise,” she says.

They compared their model, using a 35-million year cycle, with the record of craters more than 20 kilometres wide and created in the past 250 million years. Compared to random comet bombardments, their model had a likelihood ratio of 3, meaning it agreed with the observed crater dates three times better than a random rate.

Astronomers should be able to test whether the dark disk exists and has the density predicted by the model. The European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, which launched last year, will map the gravitational field of the Galaxy and could rule out or confirm the presence of this darker disk.

But Coryn Bailer-Jones, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, says that the 3-to-1 likelihood is at a level "you normally wouldn’t bother to mention". By tweaking the parameters describing the dark disk, you could well find completely different results, he says. Nor does the model account for the fact that asteroids, which are not as far out as the Oort cloud, could have caused the craters.

The arbitrary selection of craters and the fact that some estimates of their ages bear large error bars, adds to the uncertainty, says Adrian Melott, an astrophysicist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. “Dissipative dark matter is a possible explanation, but it’s not clear that it’s explaining anything real,” he says.

Despite its speculative basis, Randall says that the exercise is valuable. “This is trying to turn this somewhat crazy idea into science, by saying we will make predictions based on it,” she says. "We’re not saying we think it’s 100% going to be true."

[Nigel]

 

Scientists Develop Blood Test To Predict Alzheimer's With More Than 90% Accuracy

By Kukil Bora

on March 10 2014 4:01 AM

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The study could help develop treatment for Alzheimer's at an earlier stage, when therapy would be more effective at slowing onset of symptoms. Reuters

A team of scientists has developed a new blood test that could help physicians make a highly accurate prediction of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia in a healthy but older person.

According to the researchers, the test is based on identifying 10 fatty chemicals called lipids in the blood, which can predict if a patient will suffer from the disease, and help develop treatment strategies for various forms of dementia, including Alzheimer's, at an earlier stage when therapy would be more effective at slowing or preventing the onset of symptoms.

“Our novel blood test offers the potential to identify people at risk for progressive cognitive decline and can change how patients, their families and treating physicians plan for and manage the disorder,” Howard J. Federoff of the Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington said in a statement.

As part of the study, which is due to be published in the April issue of Nature Medicine, the researchers analyzed blood samples from 525 healthy participants aged 70 and older. In the third year of the five-year-long study, the researchers compared blood samples from 53 patients who were already affected by either Alzheimer's disease, or a condition known as amnestic mild cognitive impairment, or aMCI, with samples from 53 patients who were “cognitively normal.”

Related

 

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The scientists found that analyzing the lipid levels could predict with more than 90 percent accuracy if the patients went on to develop aMCI or Alzheimer's disease within three years. The blood test is expected to be ready for use in clinical studies within two years, the researchers said.

There is yet no cure or effective treatment for Alzheimer's, which currently afflicts nearly 35.6 million people worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, the number of people with Alzheimer's disease will double every 20 years to reach 115.4 million by 2050.

“We consider our results a major step toward the commercialization of a preclinical disease biomarker test that could be useful for large-scale screening to identify at-risk individuals,” Federoff said. “We're designing a clinical trial where we'll use this panel to identify people at high risk for Alzheimer's to test a therapeutic agent that might delay or prevent the emergence of the disease.”

This is very close to me to as my dad died of Dementia.

 

As its in the family gene I always worry that this will be passed down through the family to any of my family, so anything like this that identifies it early is fantastic news.

 

Just hope the testing keeps up the results and this can be a genuine start to any future therapy's.

[Xann]

 

Complex architecture.

[StefanAVFC]

Re: Nuclear fusion. I thought it was a pipe dream and not a realistic energy source any time soon? If so, how is a 13 year old lad doing it?

[ArteSuave]

Re: Nuclear fusion. I thought it was a pipe dream and not a realistic energy source any time soon? If so, how is a 13 year old lad doing it?

Large scale nuclear fusion with a net energy gain is a pipe dream. Muon based fusion is fairly easily reproduced on a small scale but only at a net energy loss.

[Davkaus]

What Jamie Edwards did with fusion is the Aviation equivalent of building a remote control plane. Admirable for his age, but it's not going to start transporting passengers across the Atlantic.

[coda]

The oil cartels are gonna disappear that kid.

[limpid]

 

Re: Nuclear fusion. I thought it was a pipe dream and not a realistic energy source any time soon? If so, how is a 13 year old lad doing it?

Large scale nuclear fusion with a net energy gain is a pipe dream. Muon based fusion is fairly easily reproduced on a small scale but only at a net energy loss.

 

Your "pipe dream" happened last year at the NIF.

[ArteSuave]

Re: Nuclear fusion. I thought it was a pipe dream and not a realistic energy source any time soon? If so, how is a 13 year old lad doing it?

Large scale nuclear fusion with a net energy gain is a pipe dream. Muon based fusion is fairly easily reproduced on a small scale but only at a net energy loss.

Your "pipe dream" happened last year at the NIF.

I don't think it did. "Large scale" is what I wrote. That would require it to reach ignition and AFAIK they aren't exactly on the brink of that.

[limpid]

 

 

 

Re: Nuclear fusion. I thought it was a pipe dream and not a realistic energy source any time soon? If so, how is a 13 year old lad doing it?

Large scale nuclear fusion with a net energy gain is a pipe dream. Muon based fusion is fairly easily reproduced on a small scale but only at a net energy loss.

Your "pipe dream" happened last year at the NIF.

I don't think it did. "Large scale" is what I wrote. That would require it to reach ignition and AFAIK they aren't exactly on the brink of that.

 

Sorry. Seeing as we are talking about nuclear physics in a science thread, I took large scale to mean a non-quantum scale,

 

I had no way to determine that you meant ignition from your statement. I predict ignition is less than two years away. I guess I should ask you to define your usage of "pipe dream" too in case I've misunderstood that

[ArteSuave]

Yeah that's more my fault than yours, as you correctly pointed out large scale was a poor choice of phrase. Industrial scale maybe would have been better.

I only used the phrase pipe dream because Stefan did. I probably couldn't define it anyway. Hollow, cylindrical nighttime experience? Fnarr.

I don't really know enough to disagree with your prediction. Sounds promising.

[Nigel]

 

Scientists have 'Good Chance' of Successfully Cloning 43,000-Year-Old Woolly Mammoth

• By Ewan Palmer March 14, 2014 11:45 GMT
• +

A woolly mammoth found frozen in Siberia, Russia is pictured upon its arrival at an exhibition hall in Yokohama, south of Tokyo(Reuters)

Scientists have claimed they have a "good chance" of cloning a woolly mammoth which has been frozen for the past 43,000 years.

The international team of scientists at the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk, Siberia, believe they can extract DNA taken from the blood of the animal to mix it with that of an elephant.

The team, made up of scientists from several countries including Russia, US, UK, South Korea and Denmark, said the DNA taken from the autopsy could provide the perfect material for cloning.

Radik Khayrullin, vice president of the Russian Association of Medical Anthropologists, added the team must be responsible if they decide to in effect bring the woolly mammoth back to life.

"The data we are about to receive will give us a high chance to clone the mammoth," he told the Siberian Times.

"We must have a reason to do this, as it is one thing to clone it for scientific purpose, and another to clone for the sake of curiosity."

He added that if the process was successful, the animal would be different to the mammal which became extinct around 4,000 to 10,000 years ago.

"It will be a different mammoth to the one living 43,000 years ago, specially taking into account that there will be interbreeding with a female elephant."

Related

• Woolly Mammoth's Perfectly Preserved Trunk Edges Scientists Closer to Cloning Extinct Species
• Scientist Warns against Bringing Mammoths Back from the Dead
• Woolly Mammoth's Best Preserved Remains Found - But is Jurassic Park Cloning Wise?

The team are said to be looking for a female Asian elephant whose egg they can inject the cloned material from the woolly mammoth with.

Semyon Grigoriev, head of the Museum of Mammoths of the Institute of Applied Ecology of the North at the North Eastern Federal University, said the cloning process may prove difficult as the evolutionary paths of the elephant and mammoth split many years ago.

Viktoria Egorova, chief of the Research and Clinical Diagnostic Laboratory of the Medical Clinic of North-Eastern Federal University, described her surprise at how well-preserved the body was after tens of thousands of years.

"We have dissected the soft tissues of the mammoth - and I must say that we didn't expect such results," she said.

"The carcass that is more than 43,000 years old has preserved better than a body of a human buried for six months.

"The tissue cut clearly shows blood vessels with strong walls. Inside the vessels there is haemolysed blood, where for the first time we have found erythrocytes. Muscle and adipose tissues are well preserved.

"We have also obtained very well-visualised migrating cells of the lymphoid tissue, which is another great discovery."

The mammoth was discovered in May 2013 on the Mally Lyakhovsky Island, off the northern coast of Siberia.