Tag: science

Researchers discover an anti-aging drug that extends the lives of rats 25%

9:49 am

Researchers have discovered that by blocking the increase of a certain protein within the body, they can not only extend the lives of rats by about 25%, the rats overall health in old age was improved significantly.

You can read the original paper here and the press release from the researchers here. From that press release:

After establishing IL11’s role in aging, the team demonstrated that by applying this anti-IL11 therapy in the same preclinical model, metabolism was improved. The mice shifted from generating white fat to beneficial brown fat. Brown fat breaks down blood sugar and fat molecules to help maintain body temperature and burn calories. The researchers also observed improved muscle function and overall better health in their study, as well as an increased lifespan by up to 5 per cent in both sexes.

Unlike other drugs known to inhibit specific pathways involved in aging, such as metformin and rapamycin, anti-IL11 therapy blocks multiple major signaling mechanisms that become dysfunctional with age, offering protection against cardio-metabolic diseases, age-related loss of muscle mass and strength as well as frailty. In addition to these externally observable changes, anti-IL11 therapy also reduced the rate of telomere shortening and preserved mitochondria’s health and ability to generate energy.

According the paper, this drug is now in early-stage clinical trials for fibrotic lung disease, but its benefits — as seen in these rat experiments — could turn out to be far greater, across the board.

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Astronomers discover an exoplanet with the most eccentric orbit so far found

9:41 am

Using the TESS space telescope, astronomers have discovered a gas giant exoplanet with the most eccentric orbit so far found, circling a star about 1,100 light years away.

On Jan. 12, 2020, TESS picked up a possible transit of the star TIC 241249530. Gupta and his colleagues at Penn State determined that the transit was consistent with a Jupiter-sized planet crossing in front of the star. They then acquired measurements from other observatories of the star’s radial velocity, which estimates a star’s wobble, or the degree to which it moves back and forth, in response to other nearby objects that might gravitationally tug on the star. Those measurements confirmed that a Jupiter-sized planet was orbiting the star and that its orbit was highly eccentric, bringing the planet extremely close to the star before flinging it far out.

Prior to this detection, astronomers had known of only one other planet, HD 80606 b, that was thought to be an early hot Jupiter. That planet, discovered in 2001, held the record for having the highest eccentricity, until now.

The exoplanet’s orbit is presently 167 days long, at its closest stellar approach dipping 10 times closer to its star than Mercury is from the Sun, and at its farthest point zipping just beyond Earth’s distance.

Computer simulations suggest that in a billion years this orbit will decay into a more circular orbit close to the star, turning this gas giant into a hot Jupiter roasted by its star continually.

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Europe’s Gaia space telescope in trouble

9:34 am

Launched in 2013 and now functioning more than six years after the completion of its primary mission to measure precisely the distances to over a billion stars, the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope has experienced several major technical issues this spring related to a micrometeorite hit and a failure of the electronics of one of its CCDs.

The micrometeorite hit occurred in April.

The impact created a little gap that allowed stray sunlight – around one billionth of the intensity of direct sunlight felt on Earth – to occasionally disrupt Gaia’s very sensitive sensors. Gaia’s engineers were in the middle of dealing with this issue when they were faced with another problem.

The spacecraft’s ‘billion-pixel camera’ relies on a series of 106 charge coupled devices (CCDs) – sensors that convert light into electrical signals. In May, the electronics controlling one of these CCDs failed – Gaia’s first CCD issue in more than 10 years in space. Each sensor has a different role, and the affected sensor was vital for Gaia’s ability to confirm the detection of stars. Without this sensor to validate its observations, Gaia began to register thousands of false detections.

The cause of the electronics failure remains unsolved, though it is believed related to the major solar storm that swept by at about the same time.

As a result of these issues, the telescope’s data stream will be significantly reduced. How long it will remain in operation remains unclear. At some point the cost will outweigh the amount of data obtained.

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A pit on the Moon reveals some really bad journalism

3:54 pm

Mare Tranquilitatis Pit

At the start of this week three different major news organizations posted articles about a so-called “discovery” of a cave on the Moon that could sustain a human colony.

What all three articles [now updated with a fourth] demonstrated however was how little research was done by the journalists who wrote the articles, as well as the lack of any editorial supervision to make sure the news organization publishing the stories didn’t look stupid.

Here are the articles in question:

The original paper that these stories are based on can be read here. It didn’t take me more than five seconds to immediately recognize that the pit in question, dubbed the Mare Tranquillitatis pit, has been known about for years. I in fact wrote about it as long ago as 2011, when researchers used Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to take oblique images of it. One such image is to the right, cropped and enhanced to post here.

The new research has simply used the radar instrument on LRO to take oblique radar data to see if there are any cave passages at its base, and found that there could be voids leading off from the pit as much as “tens of meters” long, or about 100 feet or so.

This is good research, but the finding is hardly significant. Numerous other studies have suggested the same results, all tantalizing but entirely unconfirmed until we can send some probe (manned or manned) into these pits. In addition, hundreds of similar lunar pits have been documented for more than a decade.

Yet the first two articles above treated this cave as God’s gift to humanity, as if it was the first such pit found on the Moon that could hold a human base, while the third provided so little information about the background of this work that the article was essentially worthless.

I write this as a warning to my readers. Mainstream news sources no longer do the proper due diligence that should be expected from writers and editors. If you want good information, you need to go to sources that specialize in the subject (such this website), and you must go to more than one in order to understand the subject entirely.

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Layered Martian mesa inside crater

1:43 pm

Layered mesa on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on May 14, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as a “layered butte inside small crater.”

The crater is only about 1.8 miles across, and is only a couple of hundred feet deep, at the most. Because this crater sits on a large slope rising to the southwest, the mesa’s peak is actually about thirty feet higher than the crater’s northern rim, but is still below the southern rim by about 70 feet.

A close look at the mesa’s slopes suggests about a dozen obvious layers, though based on data from the rovers Curiosity and Perseverance, those obvious layers are probably divided into many hundreds of thinner layers in between.

What caused these layers? And how did such a small crater get such a relatively large mesa in its center? As always, the overview map provides some clues, but as always it does not provide a definitive answer.
» Read more

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Europe targets 2031 for the first mission of its own lunar lander

10:48 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) has approved a target date of 2031 for the first mission of its own unmanned lunar lander, dubbed Argonaut, and launched on the most powerful version of the Ariane-6.

On 16 July, the agency published a call for Argonaut Mission 1 Phase A/B1 development aimed at demonstrating the technical and programmatic feasibility of the Argonaut mission concept. The call included a proposed launch date of 2031 for the first Argonaut mission to the Moon.

The Argonaut lunar lander will be launched aboard an Ariane 64 rocket. Once operational, ESA envisions it being used for a wide variety of applications, from cargo logistics to acting as an in-situ resource utilization plant. The agency has already completed pre-phase A studies for what it calls the European Charging Station for the Moon. This system would be launched aboard an Argonaut lunar lander and would essentially act as a gas station on the Moon that would be used to support crewed missions on the surface of the Moon.

As I’ve noted previously, ESA routinely sets a glacial pace on all its government-run projects. Do not expect this government lander to fly on this schedule. More likely by 2031 there will be many cheaper and available options from the private sector, and European companies wanting to put payloads down on the Moon will turn to those, especially because Argonaut is apparently being forced to use the expensive expendable Ariane-6 rocket. The cost for going on Argonaut is simply going to be too high.

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Martian taffy terrain

11:08 am

Martian taffy terrain
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on April 11, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a typical area of what scientists have labeled “taffy terrain,” a landscape made up of strangely twisted bands that look like someone was pulling the ground repeatedly, just like taffy.

Based on the lower crater count found here, taffy terrain is thought to be relative young, formed around three billion years ago. While the exact formation process is not yet understood, scientists theorize that it was caused by some type of “viscous fluid” that settled into localized depressions.

The location is 40 degrees south latitude, so it is entirely possible we are seeing some form of glacial material, ice in these low spots that has no place to go but is warped over time by the same kind of tidal and rotational planetary effects that cause waves and tides in the oceans on Earth.
» Read more

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A blob in space

9:47 am

A blob in space
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of the dwarf galaxy NGC 5238.

Its unexciting, blob-like appearance, resembling more an oversized star cluster than a galaxy, belies a complicated structure which has been the subject of much research by astronomers. Here, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is able to pick out the galaxy’s countless stars, as well as its associated globular clusters — the glowing spots both inside and around the galaxy that are swarmed by yet more stars.

NGC 5238 is theorised to have recently — here meaning no more than a billion years ago! — had a close encounter with another galaxy. The evidence for this is the tidal distortions of NGC 5238’s shape, the kind produced by two galaxies pulling on each other as they interact. There’s no nearby galaxy which could have caused this disturbance, so the hypothesis is that the culprit is a smaller satellite galaxy that was devoured by NGC 5238.

Astronomers are hoping to use this image to detect the two different populations of stars within this blob that come from those once interacting galaxies.

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Webb infrared spectroscopy detects differences between morning and evening on tidally-locked exoplanet

9:36 am

Webb spectroscopic data
Click for original image.

Astronomers using Webb Space Telescope’s infrared spectroscopy have now detected distinct differences in the morning and evening atmosphere of a tidally-locked gas giant exoplanet.

The graph, cropped, reduced, sharpened, annotated to post here, shows the differences. From the caption:

Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have finally confirmed what models have previously predicted: An exoplanet has differences between its eternal morning and eternal evening atmosphere. WASP-39 b, a giant planet with a diameter 1.3 times greater than Jupiter, but similar mass to Saturn that orbits a star about 700 light-years away from Earth, is tidally locked to its parent star. This means it has a constant dayside and a constant nightside—one side of the planet is always exposed to its star, while the other is always shrouded in darkness.

Using Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph), astronomers confirmed a temperature difference between the eternal morning and eternal evening on WASP-39 b, with the evening appearing hotter by roughly 300 Fahrenheit degrees (about 200 Celsius degrees). They also found evidence for different cloud cover, with the forever morning portion of the planet being likely cloudier than the evening.

The actual temperatures of each terminator are quite hot, approximately 1,150 and 1450 degrees Fahrenheit respectively. Computer modeling suggests “the prevailing winds are likely moving from the night side across the morning terminator, around the dayside, across the evening terminator and then around the nightside,” with wind speeds thousands of miles per hour.

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A penguin and egg, as seen by Webb and Hubble

11:32 am

A penquin and egg compared
Click for original images.

Cool image time! The two pictures to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, were taken by both the Webb and Hubble space telescopes of the same unusual galactic object, officially called Arp 142 but nicknamed by astronomers the Penquin and the Egg.

Both of these objects are galaxies. The Penquin’s strange shape is caused by the presence of the Egg, which is an elliptical galaxy that is twisting and distorting the Penquin’s original spiral galaxy whirlpool as it flies past. From the caption:

Like all spiral galaxies, the Penguin is still very rich in gas and dust. The galaxies’ “dance” gravitationally pulled on the Penguin’s thinner areas of gas and dust, causing them to crash in waves and form stars. Look for those areas in two places: what looks like a fish in its “beak” and the “feathers” in its “tail.”

Surrounding these newer stars is smoke-like material that includes carbon-containing molecules, known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which Webb is exceptional at detecting. Dust, seen as fainter, deeper orange arcs also swoops from its beak to tail feathers.

In contrast, the Egg’s compact shape remains largely unchanged. As an elliptical galaxy, it is filled with aging stars, and has a lot less gas and dust that can be pulled away to form new stars. If both were spiral galaxies, each would end the first “twist” with new star formation and twirling curls, known as tidal tails.

Another reason for the Egg’s undisturbed appearance: These galaxies have approximately the same mass or heft, which is why the smaller-looking elliptical wasn’t consumed or distorted by the Penguin.

The differences between the two pictures also reveal many aspects of the Penguin. The Hubble optical image at the top captures the lanes of dust in the foreground, while the Webb infrared image at the bottom looks right through this dust to better trace the now-distorted spiral arms where star formation is presently taking place.

Astronomers estimate that these two galaxies are about 100,000 light years apart, comparable to the width of the Milky Way. In comparison, the Andromeda galaxy is around 2.5 million light years away, and will not begin interacting with our galaxy in this manner for an estimated four billion years. The Egg and Penguin however began their warped dance about 50 million years ago.

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Europa Clipper mission threatened by faulty transistors

9:31 am

Engineers have learned that transistors installed on NASA’s Europa Clipper mission were not built to the right specifications and could fail in the harsh environment surrounding Jupiter.

The issue with the transistors came to light in May when the mission team was advised that similar parts were failing at lower radiation doses than expected. In June 2024, an industry alert was sent out to notify users of this issue. The manufacturer is working with the mission team to support ongoing radiation test and analysis efforts in order to better understand the risk of using these parts on the Europa Clipper spacecraft.

Testing data obtained so far indicates some transistors are likely to fail in the high-radiation environment near Jupiter and its moon Europa because the parts are not as radiation resistant as expected. The team is working to determine how many transistors may be susceptible and how they will perform in-flight. NASA is evaluating options for maximizing the transistors’ longevity in the Jupiter system. A preliminary analysis is expected to be complete in late July.

This issue could be disaster for the mission, which has a launch window that opens on October 10, 2024. If it is impossible to replace the bad transistors, NASA will be faced with two choices, neither great. It could launch regardless and hope for the best. It could delay the mission to fix the problem, which might involve a delay of years waiting for a new launch window.

This story appears to illustrate once again the decline in quality control that appears to be happening across much of American industry. The technology for building radiation-hardened equipment has been standard for decades. For a company to deliver equipment below standard now suggests incompetence or fraud, neither of which speaks well for it and the entire industry.

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Archeologists find the musket balls fired in the first shots of the Revolutionary War

9:33 pm

Archeologists digging at Concord discover what they think are five musket balls fired in the first shots of the Revolutionary War.

Archeologists believe five musket balls unearthed in Concord’s Minute Man National Historical Park were fired by colonial militia in the famed battle moments that sparked the Revolutionary War. The 250-year-old musket balls were discovered in an area inside the park where historians believe British troops faced colonial forces at the North Bridge.

Analysis of the artifacts indicates they were fired by colonial militia members from across the river, and not dropped from British weapons when troops were reloading.

Since the Minute Men fired over a period of time, routing the British troops, there is no way to know if these musket balls were the first fired, or among the later rounds. Nonetheless, these artifacts are an actual piece of a moment of history that literally changed all of human history.

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