James' World 2

Click the link below the picture

.

In new research, scientists have shared data from a special observatory, and it’s lead them to theorize that dark energy may be weakening. This data all comes from the first year of observation of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), an array of 5,000 robots that have worked together to map the cosmos in more detail than ever before.

While we don’t yet fully understand dark energy, a shift in our core understanding of the concept—from thinking of it as constant to thinking of it as weakening—could affect all of physics, and influence how our universe eventually ends.

When talking about the history of the universe today, scientists use a paradigm called the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM) model—a mathematical equation that works out in harmony with our current understanding of the Big Bang origin of the universe. And an essential part of it is the cosmological constant, lambda, which dates back to Albert Einstein but has evolved over time in its purpose. Lambda’s constancy is essential to our understanding of the ΛCDM model, and the constant is closely linked with dark energy, which was also suggested to be constant.

.

remotevfx//Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

DNA Of Enslaved Workers From The Industrial Revolution Unveils New African American History

.

.

.

Click the link below for the video:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

A person in Texas has tested positive for the highly pathogenic avian influenza A virus (H5N1), also known as bird flu, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed. This individual, who was exposed to cattle that were believed to be infected with the virus, reported eye redness—a sign of conjunctivitis—but no other symptoms. The patient is being treated with antiviral medication and is recovering.

Avian flu has been ripping through farmed poultry and wild bird populations around the world in recent years. It has also infected mammalian species ranging from foxes, bears, and seals to cats and dogs. And in recent weeks, infections have been found in cattle in six U.S. states: Kansas, Texas, Michigan, New Mexico, Idaho, and Ohio.* There is no evidence of human-to-human transmission so far, and the CDC says the risk to the public remains low.

The new human case is the second known to occur in the U.S. The first was in 2022, when a person in Colorado tested positive for the virus via a nasal swab after having direct contact with infected poultry. That patient reported mild fatigue and later recovered. Previous cases of avian flu in humans were deadly, but they involved a different form of the virus than the one that is currently circulating.

Scientific American talked to Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, about the latest human case and the risk to human health more broadly.

How worried should we be about the human bird flu case in Texas?

First of all, there’s some clarification here. Neither of these two cases [in the U.S.] has been an actual influenza infection, as you think of a respiratory infection. They both have been basically either a nasal swab detection, for the previous one, or in the case of this one, a conjunctivitis—an eye infection. So this isn’t classic influenza at all.

The first one was just someone who was tested routinely. They were working in a barn, depopulating the birds that were dying from flu, and they had some mild symptoms, and they just got tested. They don’t know if the symptoms were related to it, and it could have been that the virus was just picked up in the nose because of just inhaling it in. The second case is a case of conjunctivitis. So that’s not, again, unexpected in that there are receptor sites in the eye for influenza viruses.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

People have long been fascinated with how the Egyptian pyramids were built, floating theories from the construction of expansive causeways to extraterrestrial assistance.

Now scientists have evidence to support another theory, centered around the discovery of a long-lost branch of the Nile that would have run alongside 31 ancient pyramids built between the 27th and 18th centuries BC.

Though the pyramids today sit on a sandy, desert plateau near the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, a newly published study maintains the region was once home to a bustling river branch that was likely a vital means of transportation.

Researchers named the 64-kilometre river branch Ahramat (the Arabic word for “pyramids”) and said it was likely used to float large stone blocks for the construction of the pyramids. Many of the stones originated from hundreds of kilometers south of where the pyramids stand today, with some weighing more than a ton.

The river likely also transported other equipment and people.

Geomorphologist Eman Ghoneim, the study’s lead researcher, told National Geographic she and her team from the University of North Carolina Wilmington believe the lost river “was a superhighway for ancient Egypt.”

.

Scientists have discovered a lost river branch of the Nile, now named Ahramat, that they believe may have been used to transport building materials and massive stone blocks to pyramid construction sites in ancient Egypt. EWEL SAMAD/AFP via Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

https://globalnews.ca

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

The rock group Counting Crows were onto something when they chose their band name. Crows can indeed count, according to research published this week in Science.

The results show that crows have counting capacities near those of human toddlers who are beginning to develop a knack for numbers, says lead study author Diana Liao, a postdoctoral researcher in neurobiology at the University of Tübingen in Germany. “We think this is the first time this has been shown for any animal species,” she adds.

Crows do not appear to be capable of symbolic counting, in which numbers are associated with a particular symbol that serves as an exact representation. This skill is still thought to be unique to humans. Instead, the birds are able to count by controlling the number of vocalizations they produce to correspond to associated cues—just like young children who have yet to master symbolic counting often do, Liao says. For example, a toddler who is asked how many apples are on a tree may answer, “One, one, one” or “One, two, three”—producing the number of speech sounds that correspond to the number of objects they see rather than just saying, “Three.”

Scientists have long suspected that some nonhuman species might also have the ability to count by controlling the number of their vocalizations, but they have lacked the smoking gun evidence to prove it. In a study of Black-capped Chickadees, for example, researchers reported that the number of “dee” notes at the ends of the birds’ alarm calls was inversely correlated with the size of the predator they were issuing warnings about. (The small predators in that study posed a higher risk to the chickadees than large ones did.) “They seemed to be conveying the magnitude of the threat,” Liao says.

Yet, this finding on its own did not prove that chickadees were intentionally conveying information about the predator through numbered calls. The behavior could also be driven by the level of fear the birds were experiencing, Liao says, with more dangerous predators triggering higher states of arousal and thus more calls.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Europe’s upcoming Mars mission will use a pioneering nuclear-powered device that harnesses the radioactive decay of americium to keep its components warm — a first for spacecraft.

The European Space Agency (ESA) announced the plans on 16 May, alongside details of an agreement with NASA that crystallized the US agency’s contribution to the long-delayed ExoMars mission, which will deliver Europe’s first Mars rover, called Rosalind Franklin. ESA was originally working with the Russian space agency Roscosmos on the mission, but canceled the partnership in 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Radioisotope heater units (RHUs) harness the heat produced by the decay of radioactive elements to keep spacecraft warm enough to operate when it is not possible to use electricity generated by solar panels. ESA has historically relied on US or Russian partners to provide RHUs that use plutonium-238 for missions, but since 2009 has been working on its own program to create RHUs, as well as batteries that provide electricity.

The European RHUs will heat components of the mission’s landing platform, which deploys the rover onto the Martian surface. The lander powers the rover before it exits the platform and opens its solar panels. Heating the lander will extend its life, so it can provide backup in case there are issues when the rover is deployed, says Orson Sutherland, ESA’s group leader for Mars Exploration, who is based at the European Space Research and Technology Center (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

Americium decay

ESA’s heater units will not only be a first for Europe, but the first anywhere to use americium-241, a by-product of plutonium decay that packs less power per gram than does its precursor. But americium-241 is more abundant and cheaper — meaning that, even if the RHUs require more of the isotope, they might be less expensive overall. “Developing and launching a European RHU will be a first for ESA and a major achievement,” says Sutherland.

The Rosalind Franklin rover is uniquely equipped to search for traces of ancient life on Mars: it has a 2-meter drill that will allow it to burrow deep beneath the Martian surface. But the mission was originally slated for launch in 2018 and had already been delayed by technical issues and the COVID-19 pandemic, even before tensions escalated with Russia.

ESA had to radically rethink the mission to proceed without the involvement of Roscosmos, which was meant to build the lander. That led ESA to create a new European-designed lander and rely on NASA to fill the remaining holes in the mission plan. According to the agreement, NASA will provide capacity to launch ExoMars in 2028, as well as braking engines for the lander. NASA will also supply RHUs, for the rover.

.

An artist’s impression of ESA’s ExoMars rover, Rosalind Franklin. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Black holes stretch the fabric of spacetime to its extreme—and the closer you get to one, the more warped things get. “You can be really very close to a black hole and, happily, circularly orbit,” says Andrew Mummery, a physicist at the University of Oxford. But as you draw nearer, a black hole’s gravitational grip becomes overpowering. You hit a precipice, and instead of peacefully circling, you simply fall.

At this point, classical orbital mechanics breaks down, and “[Isaac] Newton has nothing to say,” Mummery notes. Describing the dynamics of an object falling headlong down a black hole’s maw is a task for Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Einstein used this theory more than a century ago to predict what happens in what would later become known as black holes. Just outside a black hole’s event horizon—the boundary past which not even light can escape—an orbiting object will abruptly encounter a so-called plunging region and plummet to its doom at nearly the speed of light.

Theorists consider a black hole’s plunging region to be where the fate of all things falling in becomes sealed. Yet beyond that basic insight, this area has remained a near-total mystery. “Basically, the preexisting theoretical models ignored this region,” Mummery says—after all, it’s small and hard to see with current telescopes. But thanks to a chance outburst by a black hole feasting on matter in our galaxy, Mummery, and his colleagues have now observed the plunging region for the first time. They reported their results in a paper published last week in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

“The first time you see it, it’s just nice to know it’s there at all,” Mummery says. “Now that we know we can see this, there’s a lot of things we can, in principle, learn using it.”

.

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

The fighting has been happening since the day after Hamas’s October 7 attacks, when Hezbollah launched guided rocket strikes against Israel in what it called “solidarity with the victorious Palestinian resistance.” Hezbollah has continually fired rockets and drones into Israel and in return, the Israeli military has launched air and military strikes against the group’s bases in Lebanon in response. Hamas and Hezbollah are both Iran-backed, anti-Israel militant groups, though they differ significantly in ideology and operational approach.

In the first six months of the fighting, there were at least 4,400 combined strikes from both sides, according to the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). An estimated 250 Hezbollah members and 75 Lebanese civilians have been killed in the fighting, along with 20 Israelis — both civilians and soldiers. More than 60,000 residents of northern Israel have been displaced by the attacks, along with some 90,000 people in southern Lebanon. 

Those numbers may pale against the far larger death toll and refugee crisis caused by the fighting in Gaza, but the situation in the north could have been — and may yet be — far worse than it has been, given the military strength on both sides. The Israeli military is, for its size, one of the most powerful in the world, while Hezbollah is the best-armed non-state group in the world, with an arsenal of between 120,000 and 200,000 rockets and missiles and up to 30,000 active personnel and 20,000 reserves, according to CSIS estimates. If it wanted to, Hezbollah could cause far more damage on Israel than Hamas — which, for comparison, had around 30,000 rockets before October 7 — ever could.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Three separate research groups have demonstrated quantum entanglement — in which two or more objects are linked so that they contain the same information even if they are far apart — over several kilometers of existing optical fibers in real urban areas. The feat is a key step towards a future quantum internet, a network that could allow information to be exchanged while encoded in quantum states.

Together, the experiments are “the most advanced demonstrations so far” of the technology needed for a quantum internet, says physicist Tracy Northup at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. Each of the three research teams — based in the United States, China, and the Netherlands — was able to connect parts of a network using photons in the optical-fire-friendly infrared part of the spectrum, which is a “major milestone”, says fellow Innsbruck physicist Simon Baier.

A quantum internet could enable any two users to establish almost unbreakable cryptographic keys to protect sensitive information. But full use of entanglement could do much more, such as connecting separate quantum computers into one larger, more powerful machine. The technology could also enable certain types of scientific experiment, for example by creating networks of optical telescopes that have the resolution of a single dish hundreds of kilometers wide.

Two of the studies were published in Nature on 15 May. The third was described last month in a preprint posted on arXiv, which has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Impractical environment

Many of the technical steps for building a quantum internet have been demonstrated in the laboratory over the past decade or so. And researchers have shown that they can produce entangled photons using lasers in direct line of sight of each other, either in separate ground locations or on the ground and in space.

.

Andrey Suslov/Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________