It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, August 07, 2021
Fish with mouth of human-like teeth caught in North Carolina
Nathan Martin reeled in a sheepshead fish at North Carolina's Jennette's Pier, which shared an image of the fish's human-like teeth on Facebook, and it quickly went viral.Photo by Jennette's Pier/Facebook
Aug. 6 (UPI) -- A North Carolina angler's catch is going viral after a Facebook post revealed he reeled in a fish with a mouth full of human-like teeth.
Jennette's Pier, a popular fishing destination in Nags Head, posted photos to Facebook showing angler Nathan Martin posing with the 9-pound sheepshead fish he reeled in this week.
The post, hashtagged "#BigTeethBigTimes," was shared hundreds of times on the social media site, with commenters pointing out the human-like qualities of the fish's teeth.
"It's a very good fight when you're fighting on the line, it's a really good catch, and it tastes very good," Martin told McClatchy News.
Sheepshead fish are known for their teeth, which allow them to eat omnivorous diets. They typically are found in coastal areas, including North Carolina.
Most baby turtles in the oceans have plastic in their guts.
‘It’s an evolutionary trap,’ scientists say
The impact on their health is unclear but it can’t be too good.
Green turtle (Chelonia Mydas). Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Plastic pollution is so rampant in the oceans that it has created an “evolutionary trap” for juvenile sea turtles. This was the conclusion of a new study that found plastic in most juvenile turtles they caught along both the Pacific and Indian Ocean coasts of Australia. The plastic trap
An evolutionary trap occurs when a previously adaptive behavior now has negative effects on the overall survival and reproduction of an organism. This usually happens when a species’ habitat is altered much faster than the organism can adapt. These traps are quite perverse since species are deceived into making poor habitat choices based upon formerly reliable environmental cues — even when higher quality habitat or resources are still available.
For instance, changing land use in an isolated Nevada meadow has driven the extinction — and subsequent recolonization — of a local population of checkerspot butterflies (Euphydryas editha).
In this particular case, newly hatched turtles have adapted to enter the oceanic zone where they travel on currents, feeding and growing to maturity. These habitats are ideal for their development, mainly because that’s where ample food is being funneled straight to their mouths. The problem is that the same currents also carry plastic debris.
“Juvenile turtles have evolved to develop in the open ocean, where predators are relatively scarce,” said Dr. Emily Duncan, of the Centre for Ecology and Conservation on Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall. “However, our results suggest that this evolved behavior now leads them into a ‘trap’ – bringing them into highly polluted areas such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
“Juvenile sea turtles generally have no specialized diet – they eat anything, and our study suggests this includes plastic,” she added.
Researchers at the University of Exeter in the UK and Murdoch University in Australia looked at how much and what type of plastics are ingested by small juvenile turtles. The study included 121 sea turtles from five of the world’s seven species: green, loggerhead, hawksbill, olive ridley, and flatback.
The results showed that the vast majority of turtles from the Pacific coast had plastic inside them: 86% of loggerheads, 83% of greens, 80% of flatbacks, and 29% of olive ridleys. On the Indian Ocean coast, the proportion of turtles containing plastic was much smaller, but still concerning. There, 28% of flatbacks, 21% of loggerheads, and 9% of green turtles contained plastic.
No plastic was found in hawksbill turtles on either coast, but this is likely due to the very small sample size consisting of only seven hawksbill.
All the animals included in the study were stranded post-hatchlings and bycaught oceanic juveniles from the longline fisheries in the Coral Sea.
Plastics now represent 80% of all marine debris and can be found virtually everywhere, from surface waters to deep-sea sediments. This debris is generally classed as either macroplastics (with a diameter greater than 1mm) and microplastics (smaller than 1mm). But for the purpose of this study, the researchers classed the debris according to color and type (hard plastics, rope, or plastic bags).
The highest number of ingested plastic pieces occurred in green turtles: one animal in the Indian Ocean contained 343 pieces, and one animal in the Pacific Ocean contained 144.
“Plastic in the Pacific turtles was mostly hard fragments, which could come from a vast range of products used by humans, while Indian Ocean plastics were mostly fibers – possibly from fishing ropes or nets,” says Duncan, who is the lead author of the study.
The most commonly ingested polymers in both oceans were polyethylene and polypropylene. However, these plastics are so widely used in products that it’s impossible to trace the source. As such, there is no viable solution other than stopping plastic pollution as much as possible at its land-based source before it reaches the ocean.
It’s still not clear how the turtle juveniles’ health is affected by ingesting plastic, though scientists suspect it can lead to malnutrition, chemical contamination, and even death from laceration, obstruction, and perforation of the gastrointestinal tract.
“Hatchlings generally contained fragments up to about 5mm to 10mm in length, and particle sizes went up along with the size of the turtles,” Duncan said.
“The next stage of our research is to find out if and how plastic ingestion affects the health and survival of these turtles. This will require close collaboration with researchers and veterinarians around the world,” she added.
The Umm Jirsan lava tube in Saudi Arabia. Credit: Richard Clark-Wilson.
Although hyenas look and hunt like canines, they’re members of the mongoose family and therefore more closely related to a cat. However, just like dogs, hyenas have an affinity for hiding bones — it’s just that they can tend to go a bit overboard. Case in point, archaeologists were left speechless after they stumbled across a lava tube cavern in northwestern Saudi Arabia that is packed with hundreds of thousands of bones gathered by striped hyenas over the course of 7,000 years. The ultimate hoarders
The gruesome floor filled with ancient animal bones was found deep in a lava tube system — a network of caverns carved by lava flow. The site, known as Umm Jirsan, was discovered in 2007, but it was only recently that researchers ventured deep into the dark caverns.
Mathew Stewart, a zooarchaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, led a team of researchers who cataloged nearly 2,000 bones and teeth belonging to at least 14 different species, including cattle, horses, camels, rodents, and even humans. Hundreds of thousands of other bones that are yet to be analyzed still lie on the cavernous floor.
Radiocarbon dating of the samples suggests the animal remains range from 439 to 6,839 years ago, which can only mean these lava tubes had been used as dens for at least 6,000 years
.
Images of Saudi Arabia’s Umm Jirsan “hyena cave”: A: Entrance to the western passage and surrounding area. B: Entrance to the western passage. Note the team members on the right-hand wall for scale. C: The back chamber in which the excavation was carried out. D: Plotted sampling square before surface collection and excavation. Credit: Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.
The striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena) is a bit smaller than spotted and brown hyenas. They have a broad head with dark eyes, a thick muzzle, and large, pointed ears, with a mane of long hair growing along the back. Their most striking feature is the legs: the front legs are much longer than the hind legs. This gives hyenas their distinctive walk, making them seem like they’re always limping uphill.
Hyenas are nocturnal or crepuscular predators that stay out of sight during the day, preferably in a natural cave or a burrow dug into the hillside. Sometimes they may take over the dens of other creatures where they transport bones to be eaten, fed to the young, or cached for later use.
It’s a well-established fact that hyena dens aren’t tidy at all, being normal to find leftover bones scattered across the floor. However, the lava tube horde stunned even the researchers who were most familiar with the hyenas. Hyenas will eat an entire human body — except for the skull cap
Although they didn’t find hyenas at the site, the researchers are certain this was one of their dens judging from the cuts, bites, and digestion marks left on the bones. The presence of human skull fragments was also telling of hyena presence since the animals are known to scavenge through burial grounds in search of food. They normally will consume everything except for the top of the skull.
“The size and composition of the bone accumulation, as well as the presence of hyena skeletal remains and coprolites, suggest that the assemblage was primarily accumulated by striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena),” the authors wrote in a study published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.
Molars and mandibles belonging to wild cows, rabbits, wild goats, camels, and wolves. Credit: Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.
It’s highly unlikely that the six skullcaps with gnaw marks on them found at the site belong to humans who were killed by a hyena hunting party. The mammals are mostly scavengers but when they do hunt they prefer to target hares, birds, and antelopes. However, the possibility that some hunter-gatherers were killed by hyena packs cannot be entirely ruled out.
Today, striped hyenas are a threatened species in Saudia Arabia but thousands of years ago they were common across the Arabian Peninsula. The current investigation at Umm Jirsan was undertaken as part of the Paleodeserts Project, a large-scale research initiative aimed at tracking environmental and climate change in the Arabian Desert region over the past one million years.
Of particular interest is how human and animal migration in the region waxed and waned with the changing climate. This is a challenging goal since the unforgiving desert climate in the region tends to destroy any exposed organic matter. Luckily, the Umm Jirsan lava tubes create a perfect time capsule that will give scientists material to work with for years to come.
Oldest example of applied geometry found in 3,700-year-old Babylonian clay tablet
The tablet shows that ancient Babylonians used Pythagorean triples to survey plots of land a thousand years before Pythagoras was born.
The Si.427 clay tablet, which was etched by an Old Babylonian scribe with a stylus sometime between 1900 and 1600 BC. Credit: UNSW Sydney.
Almost four millennia ago, two wealthy Mesopotamian landowners quarreled over a plot of land, each claiming they were the rightful owner. The dispute was solved not through sheer force and violence — this was the kingdom that laid out the very first written laws after all — but instead through rather modern-style mediation. A skilled surveyor arrived at a site and with his trusted tools, he divided the disputed lands at the border into equal plots and the two landowners were back to their happy neighborly selves.
Such Babylonian surveyors were in charge of writing up the first cadastral documents in known history, during a time when citizens were entrusted with private property which had to be delineated from common lands. These ancient surveyors, known as scribes, didn’t have total stations and GPS at their disposal, and frankly, they didn’t need them. They were very well capable of accurately measuring and dividing plots of land using a yardstick and their mathematical skill.
A 3,700-year-old clay tablet, known as Si.427, is illustrative in this regard. It shows how Babylonian surveyors must have performed geometric operations, even using Pythagorean triples to accurately make right angles, more than a thousand years before the mighty Greek philosopher was born.
In a new study published today in Foundations of Science, Dr. Daniel Mansfield, a mathematician at the University of New South Wales in Australia, explains the rich significance behind what may very well be the oldest example of applied geometry in the world.
Proto-trigonometry: the geometry for the ground
Dr. Daniel Mansfield with the Plimpton 322 Babylonian clay tablet in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University in New York. Image: UNSW/Andrew Kelly.
Although Mansfield is a mathematician, his research into Si.427 looked more like that of an archaeologist. The tablet was discovered in Baghdad at the end of the 19th-century but had since changed hands many times and its location remained an enigma. However, Mansfield had heard about it while studying thousands of Babylonian fragments relating to mathematical applications in the old Mesopotamian kingdom.
In 2017, Mansfield studied another similar tablet from the same period, known as Plimpton 322, revealing that its purpose was that of a trigonometric table of sorts. Babylonians did not actually use trigonometry as we know it, as in the branch of mathematics concerned with specific functions of angles and their application to calculations. In fact, these ancient scribes understood only one angle: the right angle.
While Plimpton 322 isn’t a trigonometric table in the conventional sense, it lists a table of rectangles useful in practical measurements. Specifically, it lists Pythagorean triples, right triangles whose three sides are all integers where the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides.
For instance, a rectangle with sides 3 and 4, and a diagonal of 5 can be divided into two equal halves at the diagonal, leaving two perfect right-angle triangles.
Plimpton 322 doesn’t list all possible Pythagorean triples but rather compiles a number of triples, both as rectangles and right triangles, that were likely commonly encountered in surveying work. It was very much practical rather than theoretical work.
Plimpton 322, a 3700-year-old Babylonian tablet. Credit: UNSW.
This limitation was owed to the sexagesimal (base 60) Babylonian number system, which means only some Pythagorean shapes can be used in practice. In this system, numbers are written by adding symbols that represent either 10 or 1, in that order. For instance, the number 5 is written as ‘blank space’ to signify no 10s and by five 1s. The number 16 is written as one 10 followed by six 1s. Then these number signs 1–59 can in turn be strung together to write numerals of any length.
The base 60 number system is actually still in use in some instances of our lives, despite the ubiquity of base 10. For instance, we still count sixty minutes in an hour and sixty seconds in a minute, and measure angles in multiples and fractions of 60. This is the legacy of Greek astronomers who adopted the Babylonian base 60 system because their own system was not as suited for astronomical calculations.
But since it is difficult to write and calculate with prime numbers bigger than 5 in base 60, only some Pythagorean triangles were used. This is why Mansfield calls the Babylonian geometry proto-trigonometry, an intermediate step towards modern trigonometry involving sin, cos, and tan.
However, it was not clear how tables such as those found on Plimpton 322 were actually used in practice. Mansfield had heard about another tablet that contained triangles and rectangles, but despite his best efforts to track it down, speaking with many officials at Turkish government ministries and museums (the last known leads for the tablet), he couldn’t find it. However, one day in mid-2018, the mathematician received a photo of Si.427 in his inbox.
“I ran out of my office and found two colleagues in the middle of a meeting. I burst into their meeting and I rambled exciting things about “Pythagoras” and “Babylon”, and my colleagues were kind enough to smile while I got all my excitement out,” he recounted.
Together, Plimpton 322 and Si.427 paint a picture of how mathematics was used in ancient Babylon. Rather than using trigonometric concepts to study the night’s sky, as the ancient Greeks had in the second century BC, the alternative proto-trigonometry employed by Babylonians seems to mostly solve problems related to the ground.
“We knew that the Babylonians were mathematically advanced. They knew all about the geometry of right triangles, but we didn’t know why. What were they doing with right triangles? What were they using them for? This question of “why” motivated me to look at Babylonian artefacts from museums, libraries and private collections around the world. What I discovered is that the Babylonians were applying their understanding of right triangles to accurately measure and subdivide land,” Mansfield told ZME Science.
“The way we understand trigonometry harks back to ancient Greek astronomers. I like to think of the Babylonian understanding of right triangles as an unexpected prequel, which really is an independent story because the Babylonians weren’t using it to measure the stars, they were using it to measure the ground. Perhaps some aspects of this knowledge were transferred to other civilizations, but I’ve not seen any evidence of this,” he added.
Although the discovery of Plimpton 322 prompted some to speculate that its purpose was linked to the construction of palaces and temples, canals, and other practical works, it was only with the discovery of Si.427 that all the jigsaw pictures came together. During the period that these tablets were etched, Babylon was undergoing social change where much land moved became private. Designating proper boundaries without affecting neighborly relationships was essential, which is where the surveyors and their right triangles came in.
Next, Mansfield plans on studying what other applications besides surveying the Babylonians had for their proto-trigonometric tablets. He’s also interested in whether there are any real-world applications for these simple but fast techniques in our modern era. “For example, this approach might be of benefit in computer graphics or any application where speed is more important than precision,” he said.
And as a comical illustration of the essential role surveyors had in the Old Babylon period, here’s a hilarious poem in which an older student berates a younger one for his incompetence in surveying a field. “It’s essentially a 4000-year-old diss track,” Mansfield told me.
Go to divide a plot, and you are not able to divide the plot;
go to apportion a field, and you cannot even hold the tape and rod properly.
The field pegs you are unable to place; you cannot figure out its shape,
so that when wronged men have a quarrel you are not able to bring peace,
but you allow brother to attack brother.
Among the scribes, you (alone) are unfit for the clay.
Pesticides, parasites, hunger — bees worldwide are dying faster than we thought, other pollinators might be too
They're definitely not having a buzzing good time.
Bees are falling like flies, new research reports, and it seems to be due to our use of pesticide cocktails.
Image via Pixabay.
We as a species are virtually completely dependent on bees and other pollinator insects, without whom we wouldn’t be able to put food on the table. A new meta-analysis that reviewed dozens of studies published over the last 20 years reports that the use of pesticide cocktails in agriculture greatly increases mortality among bees, more so than the substances taken individually. This is further exacerbated by the combined effects of agrochemicals, parasites, and malnutrition on bee behaviors and health.
The team concludes that current risk assessments significantly underestimate how much pressure bees and other pollinators are subjected to. The steep drop in pollinator numbers we’ve seen in crop and wild areas is a testament to these pressures, with potentially dire consequences for ecosystems around the world and our food security. Bees in a pinch
“A failure to address this and to continue to expose bees to multiple anthropogenic stressors within agriculture will result in the continued decline in bees and their pollination services, to the detriment of human and ecosystem health,” the study concluded.
Pollinators, bees included, are the unsung backbone of our agriculture, but also of wild plant life. Given that insect populations are in decline all over the world, this naturally raises concerns for the health of pollinators going forward — and whether they can continue performing their ecological role or not. Roughly 75% of the world’s crops producing fruits and seeds for human consumption, including cocoa, coffee, almonds, and cherries, rely on pollinators.
Such concerns were the starting point for the current study. The authors explain that while bees seem to be able to resist the different stressors plaguing them today taken individually, they’re chafing under their weight taken together. The combined pressure from agrochemicals, parasites, and malnutrition is taking a toll on the species, greatly increasing the likelihood of death for individual bees and hives as a whole.
Intensive agriculture relies on the use of compounds such as fungicides or pesticides to protect crops and ensure large yields. “Interactions between multiple agrochemicals significantly increase bee mortality,” said co-author Harry Siviter, of the University of Texas at Austin. Furthermore, industrial-scale use of managed honey bees (in order to produce honey) increases the species’ exposure to parasites and diseases, which places even more strain on them.
The continued shrinking of areas with wild plants and wildflowers translates to less diverse pollen and nectar sources for bees, and arguably lower overall amounts of food they can access.
Although previous research has looked at these factors independently — including the effect different agrochemicals have on bees — the meta-study is the first one to look at their effect in aggregate. According to the team, the results strongly suggest “that the regulatory process in its current form does not protect bees from the unwanted consequences of complex agrochemical exposure”. Although the current analysis focused on honey bees, as most literature on the subject focuses on them, more research is needed on other pollinators, the team explains, as they might react differently to the stressors we’ve seen here.
Back in 2019, researchers were drawing attention to the fact that almost half of the world’s insect species were in decline, and a third of them were at real risk of going extinct by the end of the century. Leading causes for this decline are pesticide use and habitat destruction. Against that background, the warnings of this meta-study are all the more biting.
The paper “A cocktail of pesticides, parasites and hunger leaves bees down and out” has been published in the journal Nature.
Alexandru Micu Stunningly charming pun connoisseur, I have been fascinated by the world around me since I first laid eyes on it. Always curious, I'm just having a little fun with some very serious science.
Last month was worst July for wildfires since records began
From North America to Africa, many places are dealing with record burns. Climate change may have a part in that.
Fires on forests and grasslands in July released 343 megatons of carbon emissions, which is about a fifth higher than the previous global record for July, set in 2014, according to EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. This was driven by record heatwaves and prolonged droughts in many parts of the world, which themselves are fueled by climate heating.
Image credit: Flickr / Lotus R CLICK ON TO SEE PHOTO
“This stands out by a clear margin,” Mark Parrington, a senior scientist in the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, which estimates the carbon releases, told The Guardian. “The July global total this year is the highest since our records began in 2003.”
More than half of the carbon emissions came just from two regions (North America and Siberia) that have experienced extremely hot and dry weather in the mid-summer season, according to the Copernicus report. This is only the latest in a series of unwelcomed recent records, as the world is feeling the growing effects of the climate change crisis.
Cities in western provinces of Canada and in the US states of Oregon and Washington saw temperatures above 40ºC (104 ºF) on the last few days, with a new all-time Canadian temperature record of 49.6ºC (120 ºF) in the town of Lytton. The record temperatures led to spikes in sudden deaths and hospitalizations and forest fires in many locations.
A similar scenario was registered in Siberia, where average temperatures have soared up to 10ºC above average in the biggest and coldest region, Yakutia. Much of the area is dense taiga forest, which ignites more easily when hot and dry. Despite efforts to control them, dozens of forest fires raged out of control, with authorities asking people not to go out.
In a recent study, scientists calculated that climate change dramatically increased the chances of this type of extreme heat happening. The study, not peer-reviewed yet, found that before the industrial era, this type of heatwave just wouldn’t have happened. Even in today’s warming world, the heat was a once-in-a-millennium event, the researchers said.
North of Athens, Greece, thousands of residents recently fled to safety from a wildfire that burned for a fourth consecutive day. The blaze tore through forest areas 20 kilometers north of the capital, tearing apart many homes. Several hundred firefighters dug fire breaks and hosed the flames. Traffic was interrupted on the country’s main highway that connects Athens to northern Greece.
Meanwhile, in Turkey, eight people have died and thousands have been evacuated from their homes, leaving firefighters battling blazes in several coastal resort towns. A similar scenario was seen in Italy, where the number of large wildfires is estimated to have tripled this summer compared to the yearly average, causing millions worth of damage. Upcoming challenges
While Europe deals with a very difficult scenario, in many parts of the world the fire season hasn’t approached its peak yet. That’s especially true in South America and Africa, which contribute a far greater share of associated carbon emissions than Europe. In Brazil, a severe drought is sparking concern that forest fires might remain on the same level as last year.
The government space agency, which uses satellites to monitor forest fires, reported a larger burned area in the month of July than in any July since 2016, according to data released this week. The same was true for June. Most forest fires in Brazil are manmade and often started illegally, as land-grabbers clear forest for cattle or soy crops.
Fires in Brazil usually start increasing in June and peak in September, according to historical data. They can easily get out of control during the dry season, burning large swaths of forest to the ground. Brazil has the world’s largest rainforest and tropical wetlands, the Amazon and the Pantanal, which saw record forest fires in 2019 and 2020.
Fermin Koop is a reporter from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He holds an MSc from Reading University (UK) on Environment and Development and is specialized in environment and climate change news.
IT WAS THE SAUDI'S NOT JUST BIN LADEN 9/11 victims ask Biden to declassify evidence or skip memorials
Then-Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, visit the Flight 93 National Memorial and place a wreath at the Wall of Names honoring the 40 passengers and crew that lost their lives in the September 11, 2001, attacks on September 11 near Shanksville, Pa. Some 1,800 survivors, first responders and victims' family members asked him not to attend memorials this year unless he declassifies information from the attack.
Aug. 6 (UPI) -- Hundreds of survivors, first responders and victims' family members from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Friday asking him not to attend any memorial events this year unless he declassifies government documents related to the incident.
The letter, signed by 1,800 people, calls on Biden to uphold his promise to release the evidence, which many believe shows Saudi leaders are linked to the attack.
The attacks killed nearly 3,000 victims at the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon, in Arlington, Va., and a plane crash site in Shanksville, Pa. Events to mark the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks are expected to take place in all three locations next month.
"Six month ago, the 9/11 community had great hopes that President Joe Biden would be the long lost champion of those directly affected by this murderous attack on our nation," the letter, viewed by The Independent and NBC News, reads.
"We cannot in good faith, and with veneration to those lost, sick and injured, welcome the president to our hallowed grounds until he fulfills his commitment."
Biden pledged to release as much information as possible during his 2020 presidential campaign, but victims groups said he's ignored their requests since he took office.
U.S. Sens. Bob Menenedez, D-N.J., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., also called for the Biden administration to declassify the documents during a news conference outside the Capitol on Thursday. The two senators co-sponsored the September 11th Transparency Act of 2021.
"If the United States government is sitting on any documents that may implicate Saudi Arabia or any individual or any country in the events of Sept. 11, these families and the American people have a right to know," Menendez said.
DID YOU FIND KEVIN COSTNER THERE
Solar System 2.0: We’ve Found A Water World, A Mini-Venus And A Potentially Habitable Planet, Says Scientists
I inspire people to go stargazing, watch the Moon, enjoy the night sky
This artist’s impression shows L 98-59b, one of the planets in the L 98-59 system 35 light-years ... [+]
ESO/M. KORNMESSER
Astronomers have found three intriguing planets around a star just 35 light-years distant that resemble those found in our own Solar System.
They include an ocean world, a planet with half the mass of Venus and a possible planet in the star’s habitable zone.
Is this a “Solar System 2.0?”
“The planet in the habitable zone may have an atmosphere that could protect and support life,” says MarÃa Rosa Zapatero Osorio, an astronomer at the Centre for Astrobiology in Madrid, Spain, and one of the authors of the study published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics
The findings around the star dubbed both L 98-59 and TOI-175—a red dwarf star in the constellation of Volans—could be a sign of things to come for modern astronomy, according to the researchers. That’s because it host rocky planets, like Earth or Venus, which are close enough to the star to be warm.
“We have been chasing terrestrial planets since the birth of astronomy,” said Olivier Demangeon, a researcher at the Instituto de AstrofÃsica e Ciências do Espaço, University of Porto in Portugal and lead author of the new study. “Now we are finally getting closer to the detection of a terrestrial planet in the habitable zone of its star, of which we could study the atmosphere.”
This infographic shows a comparison between the L 98-59 exoplanet system (top) with part of the ... [+]
ESO/L. CALÇADA/M. KORNMESSER (A
The study of an exoplanet’s atmosphere is critical because it could reveal the presence of biosignatures—such as oxygen and methane—which might be considered scientific evidence of past or present life. However, current telescopes lack the resolution to study them.
However, because the L 98-59 system is relatively close to Earth the researchers were able to use the exoplanet-hunting ESPRESSO instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile—and in future may able to return to their findings with the upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) when it goes “first light” in 2027.
What the researchers have uncovered so far certainly puts L 98-59 on the “to do” list for all huge telescopes:
three previously known planets may contain water in their interiors or atmospheres.
the closest planet to the star, L 98-59a, has half the mass of Venus.
the two planets closest to the star – L 98-59a and L 98-59b – might have small amounts of water.
up to 30% of the third planet L 98-59c’s mass could be water, making it an ocean world.
A “new” fifth planet—called L 98-59e and so far merely suspected—in a zone at the right distance from the star for liquid water to exist on its surface.
Of all the findings, the figuring-out of the mass of the closest planet to the star is perhaps the most important. That’s because it’s the lightest exoplanet ever measured using the radial velocity method—the very slight, but measurable wobble visible in the light of the host star caused by the gravitational tug of a planet. “If we want to know what a planet is made of, the minimum that we need is its mass and its radius,” said Demangeon.
L 98-59 will surely be studied by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which will be launched in October this year. The $9.7 billion, 6-ton space telescope has a primary mirror with a diameter of 21 feet/6.5 meters.
It’s made up from 18 gold-plated beryllium hexagonal mirror segments and will have vastly improved infrared resolution and sensitivity compared to Hubble—and much more resolution than any ground-based telescope.
I'm an experienced science, technology and travel journalist and stargazer writing about exploring the night sky, solar and lunar eclipses, moon-gazing, astro-travel, astronomy and space exploration. I'm the editor of WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com and the author of "A Stargazing Program for Beginners: A Pocket Field Guide" (Springer, 2015), as well as many eclipse-chasing guides.
Weather report from the sun could prevent all our phones AND ALL OUR COMMUNICATIONS blacking out
Scientists have developed a new model for how the material that makes up our sun moves around, starting them on a path to predicting damaging solar storms which can wreak havoc on Earth.
The sun is made up of extremely hot gases held together by its gravity, which is so great it squeezes hydrogen atoms together in a constant state of nuclear fusion, producing its light and heat. A massive coronal ejection from the sun in 2012 could have wiped out all electronics on Earth.
CREDIT:NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTRE
The gases that make up the sun are what scientists call plasma, generating an intense electromagnetic field and behaving more like a liquid.
The material moves constantly, and previous modelling of its behaviour suggested the currents and eddies in this white-hot ocean would behave similarly to those found in Earth’s oceans.
However, new mathematical modelling developed by scientists from the University of Sydney and in the US has predicted that the material moves differently from what was expected.
Geoffrey Vasil from the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney said he and his colleagues were confident their calculations reflected what was really going on in the sun’s roiling body.
Dr Geoffrey Vasil from the University of Sydney and colleagues in the US have developed a new model for how the material in the sun behaves.
CREDIT:UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
“The theory was that blobs of fluid were moving from deep within the sun up to the surface, and what we took into account was the influence of the rotation of the sun,” Dr Vasil said.
“We found that the rotation should have an influence on the movement of this fluid, and we have done the calculations and they all check out.”
Dr Vasil and collaborators Professor Keith Julien of the University of Colorado and Dr Nicholas Featherstone at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, concluded that instead of the “blobs” of material, the rotation would create giant cigar-shaped swirling columns.
Dr Vasil said this would help explain fluctuations in the sun’s electromagnetic field, which cause “space weather” - streams of high-energy particles ejected from the sun that can cause all sorts of problems on Earth.
The Earth’s magnetic field shields humans from most of the inclement solar weather, but sudden massive fluctuations in the sun, such as sunspots and solar flares, can batter down that shield.
The Carrington Event in 1859, which affected the fledgling telegraph system, is now understood to have been a massive solar storm that, if it occurred today, would disrupt all electronic devices on the side of the planet in its path.
A solar storm similar in size was launched from the sun in 2012, but narrowly missed the Earth.
Scientists are still largely unable to predict when these events will occur.
Dr Vasil said he hoped he and his colleagues’ work would bring them closer to being able to get ahead of solar weather, comparing it to improvements in weather prediction on Earth over the past century.
“We didn’t used to be very good at predicting weather, but actually we’ve gotten very good over the last few decades at predicting weather with a reasonable level of accuracy,” he said.
“But that’s here on Earth, the weather is all around us; the sun is very far away, relatively speaking, so we just don’t have all the data we need to make predictions.”
He said future solar probe missions would hopefully be able to physically observe and measure the spinning columns of plasma predicted by the team’s modelling.
Study: Questions during health visits about firearm access may prevent suicides Asking at-risk adults about firearm access may help prevent suicides, according to a new study. Photo by MikeGunner/Pixabay
Aug. 6 (UPI) -- Questions to patients about firearm access during routine primary care and mental health visits can help prevent suicide, according to a study published Friday by JAMA Health Forum.
For the study, those who receive care for mental health issues, either from their primary care physicians or mental health professionals, were asked to complete a standardized questionnaire that included the question, "Do you have access to guns?" according to the researchers.
Most provided a response, creating a potential platform for providers to initiate conversations about the safe storage of firearms, particularly when patients are at risk of suicide.
The finding "helps dispel concerns by clinicians and health-system leaders that patients won't respond to firearm questions," study co-author Julie Richards told UPI in an email.
"If people report access to firearms in combination with suicidal thoughts, then clinicians should start a dialogue with [them] about what strategies they can use to limit access to their firearms," said Richards, a research associate at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute.
"[This means] how they can create time and distance between them and their firearm so they are less likely to use it when they might be experiencing emotional pain, [such as] temporarily storing their firearms with a family member or friend or paying for storage at a shooting facility," she said.
One of the study co-authors, Dr. Marian E. Betz, of the University of Colorado in Denver, has developed a web-based resource called Lock2Live that is designed to help people make decisions about temporarily limiting access to potentially dangerous items, including firearms.
Although suicide rates have declined in the United States since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 50,000 people nationally died by suicide in 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.
Firearms are the most common -- and lethal -- method of suicide across the country, according to the agency.
However, these issues can be mitigated by making clear the purpose of the firearm question, the study showed.
Since 2015, Kaiser Permanente-Washington has included a question about firearm access on a standard questionnaire given to all patients during visits at its outpatient mental health clinics, Richards and her colleagues said.
Currently, the health system, which has integrated some mental health services into primary care, has administered the questionnaire during all visits to clinics by adults age 18 year and older with a depression or substance use disorder diagnosis.
Patient responses are included in their electronic health record to help guide appropriate follow-up care, the researchers said.
In the analysis of more than 128,000 patient responses collected during nearly 500,000 in-person primary care or mental health clinic visits between 2016 and 2019, most answered the question on firearm access.
Among primary care patients, 83% answered the firearm access question, with 21% reporting access, the data showed.
Among patients visiting Kaiser Permanente mental health clinics, 92% answered the question, with 15% reporting access.
Men were more likely to report access than women, as were people living in rural and suburban areas than people in urban areas, the researchers said.
Those who reported a prior-year suicide attempt had the lowest rates of firearms access, they said.
"My personal opinion is that standard questions about firearm access should be part of routine healthcare, like other questions used for injury prevention, like questions about seat-belts or bicycle helmets," Richards told UPI.
"Normalizing this practice could really help us make an impact and save lives," she said.
![This infographic shows a comparison between the L 98-59 exoplanet system (top) with part of the inner Solar System (Mercury, Venus and Earth), highlighting the similarities between the two. L 98-59 contains four confirmed rocky planets (marked in colour in the top panel), orbiting a red-dwarf star 35 light-years away. The planet closest to the star is around half the mass of Venus, making it the lightest exoplanet ever detected using the radial velocity technique. Up to 30% of the third planet’s mass could be water, making it an ocean world. The existence of the fourth planet has been confirmed, but scientists don’t yet know its mass and radius (its possible size is indicated by a dotted line). The team also found hints of a potential fifth planet, the furthest from the star, though the team knows little about it. If confirmed, it would sit in the system’s habitable zone where liquid water could exist on its surface. The distances from the stars and between the planets in the infographic are not up to scale. The diagram has been scaled to make the habitable zone in both the Solar System and in L 98-59 coincide. As indicated by the infographic, which includes a temperature scale (in Kelvin [K]), the Earth and the fifth (unconfirmed) planet in L 98-59 receive similar amounts of light and heat from their respective stars. Assuming their atmospheres are similar, this fifth planet would have a similar average surface temperature to Earth and would support liquid water at its surface.](https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fspecials-images.forbesimg.com%2Fimageserve%2F6109489547724799d7cf31d7%2FThis-infographic-shows-a-comparison-between-the-L-98-59-exoplanet-system--top--with%2F960x0.jpg%3Ffit%3Dscale)
