Science

Science

A virus that sickens marine mammals has been detected in Arctic waters for the first time. Scientists used drones armed with petri dishes to collect samples of blow - the air and mucus whales expel from their blowholes - from whales in northern Norway. The team identified cetacean morbillivirus in samples from humpback whales ( Megaptera novaeangliae) and one sperm whale ( Physeter macrocephalus), though the humpbacks showed no symptoms of disease.

The RS-25 engine, by far the largest in L3Harris' portfolio and a former Rocketdyne product, is not part of the sale. The RS-25 was initially known as the Space Shuttle Main Engine and was designed for reusability. The expendable heavy-lift SLS rocket uses four of the engines, and NASA is burning through the 16 leftover shuttle-era RS-25 engines on the first four SLS flights for the agency's Artemis Moon program.

Tube trains of the future may soon know exactly where they are underground - even in places where GPS is blind - by tapping into the strange rules of the quantum world. Most modern tracking systems rely on satellites to pinpoint location, backed up by accelerometers that measure tiny movements between GPS updates. It works well enough above ground, but those accelerometers gradually drift, which is why they constantly need satellite corrections.

When we envision the South Pole, we tend to think of a fixed point on Earth. But it is more fluid than you might suppose. For starters, the geographic South Pole is situated at the southern tip of Earth's axis, pretty much right in the middle of Antarctica. But this place on our planet does not coincide with Earth's magnetic or geomagnetic South Polesthose are related to the planet's magnetic field and are located on the Adelie Coast and near Russia's Vostok Station, respectively.

Astronomers may have finally solved one of the weirdest mysteries of our night sky: why Betelgeuse, a massive star in the constellation Orion, seems to fade and brighten as if it were operated by a heavenly dimmer switch. Using the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories, scientists observed Betelgeuse for almost eight years and found that patterns in the star's light suggested the wake of another, unseen star was passing through its atmosphere.

Neither jellyfish nor sea anemones have brains. But these animals sleep in ways strikingly similar to humans, according to a study published today in Nature Communications. The findings bolster a theory that sleep evolved, at least in part, to protect the DNA in individual nerve cells, helping to repair damage that builds up while animals are awake.

A peek behind the scenes at the zoo reveals animal escapades, and a glow-worm shines in a mild midwinter, in our weekly dip into Nature 's archive.

Out there, in the vast Universe, are clumps of matter that come in many different sizes and masses. We might be most familiar with galaxies like our Milky Way: with hundreds of billions of solar masses worth of stars, even more gas and plasma, and more than a trillion solar masses worth of dark matter. At smaller masses, however, it takes longer, and becomes more and more difficult, for clouds of normal matter to collapse.

While migratory birds do fly south for the winter, many seed- and insect-eating birds do not, and with leaves off the trees, the winter months are often the best time to watch them. As someone who tests smart bird feeders year-round for WIRED, I'm always interested in ways to ensure I'm attracting the largest and most interesting variety of birds to my yard, no matter the season.

Most baryons in present-day galaxy clusters exist as hot gas (≳10 7 K), forming the intracluster medium (ICM)1. Cosmological simulations predict that the mass and temperature of the ICM decline towards earlier times, as intracluster gas in younger clusters is still assembling and being heated2,3,4. To date, hot ICM has been securely detected only in a few systems at or above z ≈ 2, leaving the timing and mechanism of ICM assembly uncertain5,6,7.

The mirror spider can rapidly shift a patchwork of minuscule reflective plates underneath its abdomen's outer surface, altering the pattern of mirrorlike flashes. This uncommon display comes from common building blocks: Similar tilelike arrangements of plates and soft joints appear throughout the tree of life, from turtle shells to tropical fruit peels. Researchers have now compiled 100 examples of this pattern across animals, plants, microbes and viruses, which they describe in PNAS Nexus.

Throughout human history, individuals and societies have advanced when they upheld rigorous standards that develop and advance merit, competence, effort, skill, and capability. The construction of monuments, architectural knowledge, the development of engineering systems, and the advances in scientific knowledge all required precise alignment with universal laws of mathematics, geometry, and physics (Haklay & Gopher, 2020; Trigger, 1990). For example, in the case of the Egyptian pyramids,

In a new study published in Nature Communications, Northwestern University scientists uncovered the molecular trick behind PANX1's versatility. The channel dilates and constricts - just like the iris of an eye - to control the flow of chemical messages, which influence everything from brain activity to inflammation and even fertility. The findings show that PANX1 isn't a rigid channel but a shape-shifting molecular valve that can dynamically resize to accommodate both tiny particles and bulky signaling molecules.

When I experienced it, I burst out crying,

Although there are four known fundamental forces to the Universe, there's only one that matters on the largest cosmic scales of all: gravitation. The other three fundamental forces: the strong nuclear force, which holds protons and neutrons together, the weak nuclear force, responsible for radioactive decays and any "species change" among quarks and leptons, and the electromagnetic force, which causes neutral atoms to form, are all largely irrelevant on cosmic scales. The reason why is simple: the other forces, when you gather large sets of particles together, all balance out at large distances. Matter, under those three forces, appears "neutral" at large scales, and no net force exists.

The January full " wolf moon" is forecast to appear overnight into tomorrow morning Saturday, January 3, peaking at 5:03 a.m. ET when it will be at its fullest, according to EarthSky. However, don't be fooled: It will appear full both nights, due to its close proximity to Earth (making it appear 14% larger), and proximity to Jupiter and Gemini's twin stars-all of which will make it appear even brighter.

Rather than the very tall towers typically used for this approach, Airloom's structures are 20 to 30 meters high. They are comprised of a loop of adjustable wings that move along a track, a design that's akin to a roller coaster. As the wings move, they generate power just like the blades on a regular wind turbine do. Airloom claims that its structures require 40 percent less mass than a traditional one while delivering the same output.

Nathalie Cabrol is no ordinary scientist. The astrobiologist holds two records for the highest-altitude scuba dives. She achieved them unintentionally while exploring the lake at Licancabur, a nearly 6,000-meter-high volcano on the border between Chile and Bolivia. Cabrol has spent decades studying Earth to understand the possibility of human life in the extreme conditions of our galaxy. Slight and gray-haired, the explorer wears a vest from the SETI Institute,

A key goal, writes the author, Bobby Azarian,is to argue against the view that life is an unlikely accident that may have emerged only once on one tiny speck in a vast universe, and that it is certain to disappear as the universe's free energy dissipates in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics. He argues that while such a conclusion had for several generations seemed to be the destination to which clear-headed scientific exploration had brought mankind,

In an interview with The Register, Tudor Williams, CTO of high-frequency RF communication company Filtronic, explained the problem, which is mainly related to satellite-to-ground transmissions (many large constellations, such as SpaceX's Starlink, use optical links for satellite-to-satellite communication, which don't cause the same issues.) According to Williams, the problem comes from the side lobes of poorly designed antennas, where signals are unintentionally spread. The effect can be bands used for communications overlapping with observation bands, causing headaches for radio astronomers.

In a new study published in Science on Thursday, scientists show how they measured the mass of one such rogue planet for the first timea breakthrough that could enable further studies of these strange lonely worlds. Instead of looking at the planet's orbit, the research team, led by Subo Dong of Peking University, instead analyzed how the planet's gravity bent the light from a distant star, in a so-called microlensing event, from two separate vantage points: Earth and the now-retired Gaia space observatory.

In late November, the Finnish destination revealed its survey, which found that 73 percent of respondents said they love the feeling of "breathing in crisp winter air," and 74 percent said that " time spent outdoors in winter boosts their mental wellbeing." It also noted that two-thirds (63 percent) said that "winter air smells fresher and cleaner than any other season." And, as Santa's Lapland found, there's actual science to back up that belief.

On 1 January, Thomson takes over as the director general of Cern, the multi-Nobel prizewinning nuclear physics laboratory on the outskirts of Geneva. It is here, deep beneath the ground, that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the largest scientific instrument ever built, recreates conditions that existed microseconds after the big bang. The machine won its place in history for discovering the mysterious Higgs boson, whose accompanying field turns space into a kind of cosmic glue.

An important milestone has been achieved in brain-computer interface (BCI) technology. A new peer-reviewed study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering shows how a high-performance brain-computer interface can be rapidly implanted through a minimally invasive procedure. "We have demonstrated that the entire surgical procedure for cranial micro-slit insertion, from initial skin incision to endoscope-guided array placement and final securing of the array positions, can be safely performed in under 20 minutes," wrote corresponding author Benjamin Rapoport, MD, PhD, along with his team of neuroscientists at Precision Neuroscience.