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Overnight News Digest: Webb Telescope may have found ingredients for life in a stellar nursery [1]
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Date: 2023-01-28
NASA Webb Telescope May Have Found Ingredients for Life in an Ice Cloud
CNet
A few hundred light-years away from Earth -- exceptionally close, cosmically speaking -- lies a mysterious expanse called the Chamaeleon I molecular cloud. In an already cold and dark universe, this misty stellar nursery is considered one of the coldest -- and darkest -- districts known to date. And it is often in space's most shadowed corners where we find the brightest embers of our universe's evolution and history. On Monday in the journal Nature, scientists working with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope announced that pointing this machine toward Chamaeleon I has revealed a stunning menagerie of icy molecules hidden within the cloud. These aren't plain old molecules. They're the kind of interstellar bricks that will one day fuse into the next generation of stars, planets -- and potentially even lead to the inception of life there. Sure enough, on top of structural icy bits such as frozen carbon dioxide, ammonia and water, the JWST managed to detect evidence of what're known as "prebiotic molecules" in the cloud, according to a press release on the find. That simply refers to specific chemicals known to foster the right conditions for precursors of life.
Earth's average surface temperature in 2022 tied with 2015 as the fifth warmest on record, according to an analysis by NASA. Continuing the planet's long-term warming trend, global temperatures in 2022 were 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (0.89 degrees Celsius) above the average for NASA's baseline period (1951-1980), scientists from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York reported. “This warming trend is alarming,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Our warming climate is already making a mark: Forest fires are intensifying; hurricanes are getting stronger; droughts are wreaking havoc and sea levels are rising. NASA is deepening our commitment to do our part in addressing climate change. Our Earth System Observatory will provide state-of-the-art data to support our climate modeling, analysis and predictions to help humanity confront our planet’s changing climate.” The past nine years have been the warmest years since modern recordkeeping began in 1880. This means Earth in 2022 was about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (or about 1.11 degrees Celsius) warmer than the late 19th century average.
Earth's 'geological thermostat' is too slow to prevent climate change
New Scientist
Reactions between rocks, rain and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have helped to stabilise the climate throughout Earth’s history, but they won’t prevent our carbon emissions from causing severe warming, a study of these processes has concluded. However, the findings could help us devise better ways to trap CO2 and slow climate change. Over a million years on Earth, gas emissions from volcanoes should have nearly tripled the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and ocean. Such an increase in CO2, which is a greenhouse gas, should have led to much higher temperatures. Instead, the climate has remained relatively stable in that time, allowing liquid water to persist and life to flourish. This stability is largely down to removal of CO2 by the weathering process, says Susan Brantley at Pennsylvania State University. In simple terms, this starts when CO2 gas reacts with rainwater to form carbonic acid, which dissolves rock such as limestone. This rock erosion leads to the production of soluble minerals and bicarbonate – a dissolved form of carbon. These products are then washed into the oceans, where they form carbonate minerals that ultimately lock the carbon away in rock.
U.S. mature forests are critical carbon repositories, but at risk: Study
Mongabay
Large trees in older forests that hold significant amounts of carbon located within U.S. national forests are vulnerable to logging, according to a new study published Jan. 6 in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. Forest protection efforts often single out old-growth forests because of the carbon they keep out of the atmosphere, along with the complex ecosystems they anchor — and rightly so, Dominick DellaSala, a study co-author, told Mongabay. “You’re walking through these magnificent forests with these giant trees that are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old,” said DellaSala, chief scientist at the Earth Island Institute’s Wild Heritage Project. Protecting them is “a no-brainer.”
Alien plant species are spreading rapidly in mountainous areas
ETH Zürich
Many mountain ranges contain semi-natural habitats experiencing little human interference. They are home to many animal and plant species, some of them endemic and highly specialized. Mountains have also been largely spared by invasions of alien plant species or neophytes. A new study shows that the pressure of neophytes on mountain ecosystems and their unique vegetation is intensifying worldwide: Invasions of alien plants into higher elevations increased in many of the world's mountains between 2007 and 2017. The study, led by ETH Zurich researchers, has just been published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. Researchers observed that the number of alien plant species surveyed in each region has increased by a global average of 16 percent within the past ten years. In addition, in ten out of the eleven mountain regions studied, the scientists found neophytes at significantly higher elevations than ten or even five years ago.
Weird supernova remnant blows scientists’ minds
Nature
When dying stars explode as supernovae, they usually eject a chaotic web of dust and gas. But a new image of a supernova’s remains looks completely different — as though its central star sparked a cosmic fireworks display. It is the most unusual remnant that researchers have ever found, and could point to a rare type of supernova that astronomers have long struggled to explain. “I have worked on supernova remnants for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” says Robert Fesen, an astronomer at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, who imaged the remnant late last year. He reported his findings at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society on 12 January and posted them in a not-yet-peer-reviewed paper on the same day.
Exotic green comet not seen since stone age returns to skies above Earth
The Guardian
An exotic green comet that has not passed Earth since the time of the Neanderthals has reappeared in the sky ready for its closest approach to the planet next week. Discovered last March by astronomers at the Zwicky Transient Facility at the Palomar Observatory in California, comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was calculated to orbit the sun every 50,000 years, meaning it last tore past our home planet in the stone age. The comet, which comes from the Oort cloud at the edge of the solar system, will come closest to Earth on Wednesday and Thursday next week when it shoots past the planet at a distance of 2.5 light minutes – a mere 27m miles.
An Asteroid Just Passed Very Close to Earth
Smithsonian
A small asteroid about the size of a truck passed within 2,200 miles of Earth on Thursday. At 7:27 p.m. Eastern time, it sped over the southern tip of South America in “one of the closest approaches by a known near-Earth object ever recorded,” Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says in a statement. The asteroid, called 2023 BU, was only recently discovered: Scientists did not know it existed until Crimean amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov spotted it on January 21. He has been credited with finding several other comets and asteroids, including the first interstellar comet in 2019, named 2I/Borisov. Within three days, dozens of observations from around the world helped determine the asteroid’s orbit, highlighting the importance of both seasoned and amateur astronomers worldwide.
Scientists spot 1st gamma-ray eclipses from strange 'spider' star systems
Space.com
Astronomers have detected the first gamma-ray eclipses from a "spider" star system, in which a superdense rapidly rotating neutron star called a pulsar is feeding on a stellar companion. These never-seen before gamma-ray eclipses are caused by the low-mass companion star of the pulsar moving in front of it and very briefly blocking high-energy photons. An international team of scientists has found seven spider systems undergoing such gamma-ray eclipses, while scouring more than 10 years of data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope . In one case, the finds helped the scientists to discover how a spider system is tilted in relation to Earth, and to determine the mass of the pulsars in such systems. In the future, the research could help scientists define what mass marks the dividing line between neutron stars and black holes . "One of the most important goals for studying spiders is to try to measure the masses of the pulsars," Colin Clark, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Germany and lead of the research team, said in a statement
Large Study Finds Link Between Viral Infections and Future Brain Illness
Gizmodo
Common viral infections may be having far-reaching effects on our brain health, new research suggests. The study found a link between dozens of different viral exposures and a later increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other brain disorders. More research will be needed to untangle the true role, if any, these infections could play in causing these conditions, however. The research comes from scientists with the U.S. National Institutes of Health. They analyzed data from two existing and nationally representative biobank projects tracking the long-term health of residents in Finland and the UK, respectively, collectively involving around 450,000 people. They looked for links between viral infections that led to hospitalization and six neurodegenerative diseases: Alzheimer’s disease (the most common form of dementia), ALS, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, vascular dementia, and generalized dementia.
Be kind to bees, build with bee bricks
Science Spot
We know that bees are important to natural ecosystems and also to human agriculture and horticulture. They are great pollinators of so plant flowering plant species and are also a source of food and materials we have used for thousands of years, namely honey, honeycomb, and beeswax. Here’s the sting in the tale though. Bees are in decline. The problem is partly due to habitat and climate change but also because of our growing reliance on pesticides for food production. Conservation and rewilding efforts are often stymied by building construction. So, what if we could incorporate bee-friendly habitats into those very buildings? Writing in the International Journal of Sustainable Design, a UK research team discusses the design of a bee brick, which can be incorporated into the stonework of a new building, or perhaps even replace some bricks in older buildings. The bee brick is aimed at providing habitat for solitary bees, which are far more common pollinators than the more familiar honeybee.
When alpha mice are trounced by weaklings, they spiral into depression
Science
When two male mice meet in a confined space, the rules of engagement are clear: The lower ranking mouse must yield. But when these norms go out the window—say, when researchers rig such an encounter to favor the weakling—it sends the higher ranking male into a depressionlike spiral. That’s the conclusion of a new neuroimaging study that reveals how the mouse brain responds to an unexpected loss of social status, which has been shown to be a major risk factor for depression in humans, particularly men. The new study’s approach is “clever and powerful,” says Neir Eshel, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at Stanford University who wasn’t involved in the work. But he cautions more work is needed to extend the results to our own species. Groups of mice live in hierarchies, both in the lab and the wild. In the lab, though, the highest ranking males form particularly despotic regimes. One or more dominant “alpha mice” will have privileged access to food and females. They can pee wherever they please, rather than in the designated corner reserved for commoners.
Scientists Tried to Break Cuddling. Instead, They Broke 30 Years of Research.
The Atlantic
Of the dozens of hormones found in the human body, oxytocin might just be the most overrated. Linked to the pleasures of romance, orgasms, philanthropy, and more, the chemical has been endlessly billed as the “hug hormone,” the “moral molecule,” even “the source of love and prosperity.” It has inspired popular books and TED Talks. Scientists and writers have insisted that spritzing it up human nostrils can instill compassion and generosity; online sellers have marketed snake-oil oxytocin concoctions as “Liquid Trust.” But as my colleague Ed Yong and others have repeatedly written, most of what’s said about the hormone is, at best, hyperbole. Sniffing the chemical doesn’t reliably make people more collaborative or trusting; trials testing it as a treatment for children with autism spectrum disorder have delivered lackluster results. And although decades of great research have shown that the versatile molecule can at times spark warm fuzzies in all sorts of species—cooperation in meerkats, monogamy in prairie voles, parental care in marmosets and sheep—under other circumstances, oxytocin can turn creatures ranging from rodents to humans aggressive, fearful, even prejudiced. Now researchers are finding that oxytocin may be not only insufficient for forging strong bonds, but also unnecessary.
10 Mummified Crocodiles Emerge From an Egyptian Tomb
The New York Times
At first glance, you may think you’re looking at a picture of living crocodiles moving stealthily through mud. But the animals above are mummies, possibly dead for more than 2,500 years and preserved in a ritual that likely honored Sobek, a fertility deity worshiped in ancient Egypt. The mummies were among 10 adult crocodiles, likely from two different species, the remains of which were unearthed recently from a tomb at Qubbat al-Hawa on the west bank of the Nile River. The discovery was detailed in the journal PLoS ONE on Wednesday. The crocodile has played an important role in Egyptian culture for thousands of years. In addition to being linked to a deity, it was a food source, and parts of the animal, like its fat, were used as medicine to treat body pains, stiffness and even balding.
Archaeologists May've Discovered The 'Oldest' And 'Most Complete' Egyptian Mummy Yet
Science Alert
A team of archaeologists unearthed what could be the "oldest" and "most complete" mummy ever discovered in Egypt, the leader of the excavation announced on Thursday. Thought to be the remains of a man named Hekashepes, archaeologists found the 4,300-year-old mummy in an ancient tomb near Cairo from the country's fifth and sixth dynasty – which spanned from the years 2500 BCE to 2100 BCE, Zahi Hawass, Egypt's former minister of antiquities, said in a statement. "I put my head inside to see what was inside the sarcophagus: A beautiful mummy of a man completely covered in layers of gold," Hawass told reporters at the site of the excavation. The centuries-old mummy was found at the bottom of a 15-meter shaft near the Step Pyramid at the Necropolis of Saqqara, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saqqara, a "great masterpiece of architectural design," is located in Memphis, the first capital of ancient Egypt.
Why More Physicists Are Starting to Think Space and Time Are ‘Illusions’
The Daily Beast
This past December, the physics Nobel Prize was awarded for the experimental confirmation of a quantum phenomenon known for more than 80 years: entanglement. As envisioned by Albert Einstein and his collaborators in 1935, quantum objects can be mysteriously correlated even if they are separated by large distances. But as weird as the phenomenon appears, why is such an old idea still worth the most prestigious prize in physics? Coincidentally, just a few weeks before the new Nobel laureates were honored in Stockholm, a different team of distinguished scientists from Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Fermilab and Google reported that they had run a process on Google’s quantum computer that could be interpreted as a wormhole. Wormholes are tunnels through the universe that can work like a shortcut through space and time and are loved by science fiction fans, and although the tunnel realized in this recent experiment exists only in a 2-dimensional toy universe, it could constitute a breakthrough for future research at the forefront of physics. But why is entanglement related to space and time? And how can it be important for future physics breakthroughs? Properly understood, entanglement implies that the universe is “monistic”, as philosophers call it, that on the most fundamental level, everything in the universe is part of a single, unified whole. It is a defining property of quantum mechanics that its underlying reality is described in terms of waves, and a monistic universe would require a universal function. Already decades ago, researchers such as Hugh Everett and Dieter Zeh showed how our daily-life reality can emerge out of such a universal quantum-mechanical description. But only now are researchers such as Leonard Susskind or Sean Carroll developing ideas on how this hidden quantum reality might explain not only matter but also the fabric of space and time.
Requiem for a string: Charting the rise and fall of a theory of everything
Ars Technica
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