Been a bit since I posted some Science articles..... I saved a couple good ones up for for you lot....
OH! Before that, a couple things; I don't go on Facebook to see people's posts, to see my posts, to see anything. My 'posts' on Facebook gracefully appear thanks to Twitter, the lesser of several evils.
So, if you reply or post to any of my 'posts', I won't see them. I'm not tryin' to be a dick or rude, I just fucking HATE Facebook and I rarely go on there with the exception to change settings, but I figured that some people might like to read my Blog, so that's why I'm posting through Twitter.
2ndly, at the bottom of this Blog, there's a section where YOU, yes YOU, the person reading this, can leave a message, post, throw out insults, whatever ya wish. Like I said, I don't go to Facebook anymore, so, if you want to post something for me to read, please, by all means do so in that section! It's easy! It's FREE and it's fun!
Today at Superstore I was in the 'Pop' isle and they were out of the plastic bottles of Pepsi that I buy, so I saw they had some 'tall boy' cans and hey! They were NHL special cans, with 'autographs' by certain players from certain teams.
I reached in back to get a Canucks can and this stupid Montreal Canadiens can rolls off the shelf onto the floor. I did hear the 'hissing' sound and looked down to see it had sprung a leak and pop was fizzing onto the floor. As I looked up to see who saw this happen a Pepsi rep was right there and I was like, 'Fuck, did you see that?' and as soon as I said that, the evil Montreal Canadiens can kinda rolled from the fizz coming out and this stream goes right up my fucking leg and sprays me in the face... Fuck Montreal Canadiens!
Now, onto zeee Science!
13,000-Year Old Human Footprints Found Off Canada's Pacific Coast
Photograph of track #17 beside digitally-enhanced image of same feature using the DStretch plugin for ImageJ. Note the toe impressions and arch indicating that this is a right footprint. Credit: Duncan McLaren
(phys.org) - - Human footprints found off Canada's Pacific coast may be 13,000 years old, according to a study published March 28, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Duncan McLaren and colleagues from the Hakai Institute and University of Victoria, Canada.
Previous research suggests that, during the last ice age (which ended around 11,700 years ago), humans moved into the Americas from Asia across what was then a land bridge to North America, eventually reaching what is now the west coast of British Columbia, Canada as well as coastal regions to the south. Along the pacific coast of Canada, much of this shoreline is today covered by dense forest and only accessible by boat, making it difficult to look for the archaeological evidence which might support this hypothesis. In this study, the research team excavated intertidal beach sediments on the shoreline of Calvert Island, British Columbia, where the sea level was two to three meters lower than it is today at the end of the last ice age.
The researchers uncovered 29 human footprints of at least three different sizes in these sediments, which radiocarbon dating estimated to be around 13,000 years old. Measurements and digital photographic analyses revealed that the footprints probably belonged to two adults and a child, all barefoot. The findings suggest that humans were present on the west coast of British Columbia about 13,000 years ago, as it emerged from the most recent ice age.
This finding adds to the growing body of evidence supporting the hypothesis that humans used a coastal route to move from Asia to North America during the last ice age. The authors suggest that further excavations with more advanced methods are likely to uncover more human footprints in the area and would help to piece together the patterns of early human settlement on the coast of North America.
"This article details the discovery of footprints on the west coast of Canada with associated radiocarbon dates of 13,000 years before present," says Duncan McLaren, lead author of the study. "This finding provides evidence of the seafaring people who inhabited this area during the tail end of the last major ice age."
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-year-human-footprints-canada-pacific.html#jCp
New Exoplanet Hunter To Search For Worlds Beyond Our Own
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a NASA Explorer mission launching within the next few months to study exoplanets, or planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. TESS will discover thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest stars in the sky. (NASA GSFC)
(cbcnews.ca) - - The search for worlds circling stars far beyond our solar system will resume in the coming weeks with NASA's launch of a spacecraft scientists hope will enlarge the known catalog of so-called exoplanets believed capable of supporting life.
NASA plans to send the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, into orbit from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket set for blast-off between April 16 and June on a two-year, $337-million mission.
The latest NASA astrophysics endeavour is designed to build on the work of its predecessor, the Kepler space telescope, which discovered the bulk of some 3,500 exoplanets documented during the past 20 years, revolutionizing one of the newest fields in space science.
NASA expects TESS to detect thousands more previously unknown worlds, perhaps hundreds of them Earth-sized or "super-Earth"-sized — no larger than twice as big as our home planet.
Such worlds are believed to stand the greatest chance of having rocky surfaces or oceans, and are thus considered the most promising candidates for the evolution of life, as opposed to gas giants similar to Jupiter or Neptune.
Tess, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is seen here as technicians help prepare the spacecraft for launch. (NASA)
Astronomers hope to end up with anywhere from 10 to 30 more rocky exoplanets for further study.
The new probe will take about 60 days to attain its highly elliptical, first-of-a-kind orbit that will loop TESS between Earth and the moon every two and a half weeks.
Kepler's positioning system broke down in 2013, about four years after its launch, and it has nearly run out of fuel.
"So it's perfect timing that we'll be launching TESS to continue the great activity of looking for planets around stars other than our sun and thinking about what it might mean for life in the universe," Paul Hertz, NASA's director of astrophysics, told reporters at a news briefing in Washington on Wednesday.
Building on Kepler
TESS, roughly the size of a refrigerator with solar-panel wings, is equipped with four special cameras to survey 200,000 stars that are relatively near the sun and thus among the brightest in the sky, seeking out those with planets of their own.
Like Kepler, TESS will use a detection method called transit photometry, which looks for periodic, repetitive dips in the visible light from stars star caused by planets passing, or transiting, in front of them.
But unlike Kepler, which fixed its glare on stars within a tiny fraction of the sky, TESS will scan the majority of the heavens for shorter periods and focus much of its attention on stars called red dwarfs, which are smaller, cooler and longer-lived than our sun.
One reason is red dwarfs have a high propensity for Earth-sized, presumably rocky planets, making them potentially fertile ground for closer examination, said David Latham, TESS science director for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Also because red dwarfs are so small, and their planets orbit more closely than the Earth does to the sun, the dip in light from a planetary transit of a red dwarf is more pronounced compared with a larger star, Latham said.
"It's easier to find interesting planets around smaller stars," he said.
Measuring dips in starlight can determine the exoplanet's size and orbital path. Further observations from ground telescopes can supply its mass and ultimately the planet's density and composition — whether largely solid, liquid or gas.
Latham said fewer than 10 rocky, Earth- or super-Earth-sized planets have previously been confirmed, and NASA hopes to double or triple that number through the TESS mission.
The most favourable discoveries will undergo closer scrutiny by a new generation of larger, more powerful telescopes now under development that will search for telltale signs of water and "the kinds of gases in their atmospheres that on Earth are an indication of life," Hertz said.
"TESS itself will not be able to find life beyond Earth, but TESS will help us figure out where to point our larger telescopes," he said.
Link: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/nasa-tess-exoplanets-1.4598616
Brain Waves Of Concertgoers Sync Up At Shows
THEY GOT THE BEAT People’s brain waves sync up when watching live music, and the coordinated activity is tied to having more fun.
OH! Before that, a couple things; I don't go on Facebook to see people's posts, to see my posts, to see anything. My 'posts' on Facebook gracefully appear thanks to Twitter, the lesser of several evils.
So, if you reply or post to any of my 'posts', I won't see them. I'm not tryin' to be a dick or rude, I just fucking HATE Facebook and I rarely go on there with the exception to change settings, but I figured that some people might like to read my Blog, so that's why I'm posting through Twitter.
2ndly, at the bottom of this Blog, there's a section where YOU, yes YOU, the person reading this, can leave a message, post, throw out insults, whatever ya wish. Like I said, I don't go to Facebook anymore, so, if you want to post something for me to read, please, by all means do so in that section! It's easy! It's FREE and it's fun!
Today at Superstore I was in the 'Pop' isle and they were out of the plastic bottles of Pepsi that I buy, so I saw they had some 'tall boy' cans and hey! They were NHL special cans, with 'autographs' by certain players from certain teams.
I reached in back to get a Canucks can and this stupid Montreal Canadiens can rolls off the shelf onto the floor. I did hear the 'hissing' sound and looked down to see it had sprung a leak and pop was fizzing onto the floor. As I looked up to see who saw this happen a Pepsi rep was right there and I was like, 'Fuck, did you see that?' and as soon as I said that, the evil Montreal Canadiens can kinda rolled from the fizz coming out and this stream goes right up my fucking leg and sprays me in the face... Fuck Montreal Canadiens!
Now, onto zeee Science!
13,000-Year Old Human Footprints Found Off Canada's Pacific Coast
(phys.org) - - Human footprints found off Canada's Pacific coast may be 13,000 years old, according to a study published March 28, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Duncan McLaren and colleagues from the Hakai Institute and University of Victoria, Canada.
Previous research suggests that, during the last ice age (which ended around 11,700 years ago), humans moved into the Americas from Asia across what was then a land bridge to North America, eventually reaching what is now the west coast of British Columbia, Canada as well as coastal regions to the south. Along the pacific coast of Canada, much of this shoreline is today covered by dense forest and only accessible by boat, making it difficult to look for the archaeological evidence which might support this hypothesis. In this study, the research team excavated intertidal beach sediments on the shoreline of Calvert Island, British Columbia, where the sea level was two to three meters lower than it is today at the end of the last ice age.
The researchers uncovered 29 human footprints of at least three different sizes in these sediments, which radiocarbon dating estimated to be around 13,000 years old. Measurements and digital photographic analyses revealed that the footprints probably belonged to two adults and a child, all barefoot. The findings suggest that humans were present on the west coast of British Columbia about 13,000 years ago, as it emerged from the most recent ice age.
This finding adds to the growing body of evidence supporting the hypothesis that humans used a coastal route to move from Asia to North America during the last ice age. The authors suggest that further excavations with more advanced methods are likely to uncover more human footprints in the area and would help to piece together the patterns of early human settlement on the coast of North America.
"This article details the discovery of footprints on the west coast of Canada with associated radiocarbon dates of 13,000 years before present," says Duncan McLaren, lead author of the study. "This finding provides evidence of the seafaring people who inhabited this area during the tail end of the last major ice age."
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-year-human-footprints-canada-pacific.html#jCp
New Exoplanet Hunter To Search For Worlds Beyond Our Own
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a NASA Explorer mission launching within the next few months to study exoplanets, or planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. TESS will discover thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest stars in the sky. (NASA GSFC)
(cbcnews.ca) - - The search for worlds circling stars far beyond our solar system will resume in the coming weeks with NASA's launch of a spacecraft scientists hope will enlarge the known catalog of so-called exoplanets believed capable of supporting life.
NASA plans to send the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, into orbit from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket set for blast-off between April 16 and June on a two-year, $337-million mission.
The latest NASA astrophysics endeavour is designed to build on the work of its predecessor, the Kepler space telescope, which discovered the bulk of some 3,500 exoplanets documented during the past 20 years, revolutionizing one of the newest fields in space science.
NASA expects TESS to detect thousands more previously unknown worlds, perhaps hundreds of them Earth-sized or "super-Earth"-sized — no larger than twice as big as our home planet.
Such worlds are believed to stand the greatest chance of having rocky surfaces or oceans, and are thus considered the most promising candidates for the evolution of life, as opposed to gas giants similar to Jupiter or Neptune.
Astronomers hope to end up with anywhere from 10 to 30 more rocky exoplanets for further study.
The new probe will take about 60 days to attain its highly elliptical, first-of-a-kind orbit that will loop TESS between Earth and the moon every two and a half weeks.
Kepler's positioning system broke down in 2013, about four years after its launch, and it has nearly run out of fuel.
"So it's perfect timing that we'll be launching TESS to continue the great activity of looking for planets around stars other than our sun and thinking about what it might mean for life in the universe," Paul Hertz, NASA's director of astrophysics, told reporters at a news briefing in Washington on Wednesday.
Building on Kepler
TESS, roughly the size of a refrigerator with solar-panel wings, is equipped with four special cameras to survey 200,000 stars that are relatively near the sun and thus among the brightest in the sky, seeking out those with planets of their own.
Like Kepler, TESS will use a detection method called transit photometry, which looks for periodic, repetitive dips in the visible light from stars star caused by planets passing, or transiting, in front of them.
But unlike Kepler, which fixed its glare on stars within a tiny fraction of the sky, TESS will scan the majority of the heavens for shorter periods and focus much of its attention on stars called red dwarfs, which are smaller, cooler and longer-lived than our sun.
One reason is red dwarfs have a high propensity for Earth-sized, presumably rocky planets, making them potentially fertile ground for closer examination, said David Latham, TESS science director for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Also because red dwarfs are so small, and their planets orbit more closely than the Earth does to the sun, the dip in light from a planetary transit of a red dwarf is more pronounced compared with a larger star, Latham said.
"It's easier to find interesting planets around smaller stars," he said.
Measuring dips in starlight can determine the exoplanet's size and orbital path. Further observations from ground telescopes can supply its mass and ultimately the planet's density and composition — whether largely solid, liquid or gas.
Latham said fewer than 10 rocky, Earth- or super-Earth-sized planets have previously been confirmed, and NASA hopes to double or triple that number through the TESS mission.
The most favourable discoveries will undergo closer scrutiny by a new generation of larger, more powerful telescopes now under development that will search for telltale signs of water and "the kinds of gases in their atmospheres that on Earth are an indication of life," Hertz said.
"TESS itself will not be able to find life beyond Earth, but TESS will help us figure out where to point our larger telescopes," he said.
Link: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/nasa-tess-exoplanets-1.4598616
Brain Waves Of Concertgoers Sync Up At Shows
(sciencenews.org) - - BOSTON — Getting your groove on solo with headphones on might be your jam, but it can’t compare with a live concert. Just ask your brain. When people watch live music together, their brains waves synchronize, and this brain bonding is linked with having a better time.
The new findings, reported March 27 at a Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting, are a reminder that humans are social creatures. In western cultures, performing music is generally reserved for the tunefully talented, but this hasn’t been true through much of human history. “Music is typically linked with ritual and in most cultures is associated with dance,” said neuroscientist Jessica Grahn of Western University in London, Canada. “It’s a way to have social participation.”
Study participants were split into groups of 20 and experienced music in one of three ways. Some watched a live concert with a large audience, some watched a recording of the concert with a large audience, and some watched the recording with only a few other people. Each person wore EEG caps, headwear covered with electrodes that measure the collective behavior of the brain’s nerve cells. The musicians played an original song they wrote for the study.
The delta brain waves of audience members who watched the music live were more synchronized than those of people in the other two groups. Delta brain waves fall in a frequency range that roughly corresponds to the beat of the music, suggesting that beat drives the synchronicity, neuroscientist Molly Henry, a member of Grahn’s lab, reported. The more synchronized a particular audience member was with others, the more he or she reported feeling connected to the performers and enjoying the show.
Study Suggests Earth's Water Was Present Before Impact That Caused Creation Of The Moon
This image shows the far side of the Moon, illuminated by the Sun. Credit: NASA
(Phys.org) - - A team of researchers from the U.K., France and the U.S. has found evidence that suggests that most of the water on Earth was present before the impact that created the moon. In their paper published on the open access site Science Advances, the group describes their study and comparison of moon and Earth rocks, and what they found.
The prevailing theory regarding how the moon's origin is that a Mars-sized protoplanet slammed into protoplanetary Earth, and the ejected material coalesced to form the moon. The prevailing theory regarding how water came to exist on Earth is that most of it was delivered by asteroids and comets. In this new effort, the researchers present evidence that bolsters the first theory but conflicts strongly with the second.
The team studied both moon rocks brought back to Earth by the Apollo astronauts and volcanic rocks retrieved by others from the ocean floor. The researchers looked specifically at oxygen isotopes. Studying isotopes in rocks offers scientists a means for comparing material from different origins such as asteroids, planets or even comets—each tends to have its own unique composition signature.
The researchers report that oxygen isotopes from the moon and Earth are remarkably similar—they found just a three to four ppm difference between them. This finding bolsters the theory that the moon was formed from material from the Earth due to a collision. But it runs counter to the idea that water came from comets or asteroids, because if it had come from such sources, the isotopes would have differed from those found in rocks on the moon. Thus, most of the water that was present in the protoplanetary Earth likely survived the impact, suggesting it did not come from elsewhere.
The idea that water could survive such an impact has implications for the search for life beyond our solar system—exoplanets that are thought to have suffered collisions are typically removed from lists describing possible life-sustaining celestial bodies. Now, they may have to be included.
Abstract
The Earth-Moon system likely formed as a result of a collision between two large planetary objects. Debate about their relative masses, the impact energy involved, and the extent of isotopic homogenization continues. We present the results of a high-precision oxygen isotope study of an extensive suite of lunar and terrestrial samples. We demonstrate that lunar rocks and terrestrial basalts show a 3 to 4 ppm (parts per million), statistically resolvable, difference in Δ17O. Taking aubrite meteorites as a candidate impactor material, we show that the giant impact scenario involved nearly complete mixing between the target and impactor. Alternatively, the degree of similarity between the Δ17O values of the impactor and the proto-Earth must have been significantly closer than that between Earth and aubrites. If the Earth-Moon system evolved from an initially highly vaporized and isotopically homogenized state, as indicated by recent dynamical models, then the terrestrial basalt-lunar oxygen isotope difference detected by our study may be a reflection of post–giant impact additions to Earth. On the basis of this assumption, our data indicate that post–giant impact additions to Earth could have contributed between 5 and 30% of Earth's water, depending on global water estimates. Consequently, our data indicate that the bulk of Earth's water was accreted before the giant impact and not later, as often proposed.
Et C'est tout! Bon Nuit! Fuckerz
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