Bizarre nearby star offers clues to origins of mysterious fast radio bursts

For a fraction of a second in late April, a hyper-magnetised star in the Milky Way suddenly blasted out radio energy. Now scientists say that this sudden, strange blip could help to explain one of astronomy’s biggest puzzles: what powers the hundreds of other mysterious fast radio bursts (FRBs) that have been spotted much farther away in the Universe. Many astronomers think that fast radio bursts — brief but powerful cosmic flashes that flare for just milliseconds — come from magnetars, but haven’t found the link.

Archæologists discover 'amazing' details of Roman city

Archaeologists have mapped a full ancient city with ground-penetrating radar. Falerii Novi, a 30-hectare settlement near Rome that was occupied between 241 BC and AD 700, is now almost entirely buried under agricultural land. The team towed their radar antennas with a quad bike. Their finds include a mysterious public monument — possibly linked to pre-Roman religions — and an extensive network of water pipes that was evidently planned and laid before the city was built.

Oldest Mayan monument ever found

A huge artificial plateau that is 1.4 kilometres long and 10–15 metres high has been discovered in Mexico. Archaeologists spotted the monumental construction from the air using lidar, a remote-sensing method that maps the ground using lasers. Dubbed Aguada Fénix, the extensive structure was built between 1000 and 800 BC, and precedes the peak of the Maya empire by more than a millennium.

Revolutionary microscopy sees individual atoms for first time

A game-changing technique for imaging molecules has produced its sharpest pictures yet — and, for the first time, has discerned individual atoms in a protein. The cryo-electron microscopy breakthrough, reported by two laboratories late last month, will ultimately help researchers to understand how proteins work in health and disease, and will lead to better drugs with fewer side effects.

Ancient DNA offers clues to physical origins of Dead Sea Scrolls

DNA fingerprinting is helping researchers to understand the patchwork of archæological fragments known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Through genetic analysis, researchers have been able to reconstruct the origin of some of the ancient parchments. In particular, they realised that two pieces once considered part of the same manuscript were in fact made from different animal hides — one from sheep and the other from cow.

Topological insulators enter the fourth dimension

Physicists have created a virtual crystal with four spatial dimensions that acts as a topological insulator — a material that conducts electricity on only its outer boundary. To do so, the team wired up connections among electrical circuits to simulate those in a four-dimensional (4D) crystal. (Just as cubes have six square faces, hypercubes have eight cubic ‘faces’ — so when hypercubes are stacked in 4D, each one is in contact with eight neighbours.) A similar scheme could extend to even more dimensions of space, leading to the observation of new phenomena. Exotic topological insulators could find applications in future quantum computers.

The most ancient land animal ever found

An inch-long creature similar to a millipede looks to be the oldest animal known to have lived on land. Fossil imprints of Kampecaris obanensis from the island of Kerrera in Scotland have been radiometrically dated to around 425 million years ago, in the Silurian period. The arthropod probably fed on decomposing plants on a lakeside. Even earlier land animals, from the Cambrian era, are known to have existed, but only indirectly, from their tracks.

Black Hole Paradoxes Reveal a Fundamental Link Between Energy and Order

The physics of black holes has led to the discovery of a basic link between entropy and energy. The idea began when theoreticians spotted a paradox about Hawking radiation, Stephen Hawking’s calculation that black holes must lose mass over an extremely long time. But if a black hole is even slightly electrically charged, after shrinking for eons it will get to a point at which its electric charge is extremely concentrated — which should prevent it from shrinking further, and perhaps even lead it to split into two smaller black holes. While studying this problem, theoretical physicists stumbled on a formula linking any object’s energy to its entropy — a measure of the number of ways an object’s parts can be rearranged without changing its state.

Astronomers find 'missing' baryonic matter

Astronomers have detected much of the Universe’s ordinary matter, which had long been missing from accounts of its total mass. Not ‘dark matter’ — the mysterious, invisible stuff that makes up the majority of the Universe’s contents. This is normal matter, but it’s spread so sparsely across intergalactic space that more than three-quarters of it is almost undetectable. Using an array of 36 radio telescopes in remote Western Australia, researchers analysed the light from 6 fast radio bursts (FRBs), unusually energetic events that last just milliseconds and originate in other galaxies. The spectrum was sensitive enough to reveal the exceedingly thin matter that the FRBs met in their travels.

Balls of moss move like a flock

Squishy pillows of moss appear to slowly move across glaciers in a coordinated fashion, researchers have found. In a long-term study in Alaska, researchers tagged the rolling ‘glacier mice’ to monitor their motion. The herd seems to move in unison, at a speed of about 2.5 centimetres per day. Their motion didn’t align with the prevailing winds, and they weren’t rolling down a slope — so what propels them is still a mystery.

‘Molecular movie’ shows how electrons rearrange to kick-off a chemical reaction

Scientists in the US and UK are the first to observe electrons rearrange their positions in molecules during the early stages of a light-driven chemical reaction. They did so by firing ultrashort light and X-ray pulses at the molecules to create “movies” of electron motion. The technique promises to shed further light on chemical processes such as bond making and breaking. Their method could also be used to study other ultrafast processes in physics, chemistry, and biology.

Bumblebees Bite Plants to Induce Flowering

When pollen is scarce, bumblebees have their way of extorting more from plants. The insects bite into leaves with their mandibles and proboscises to induce flowering up to one month earlier than normal. Chemical ecologists spotted the unusual behaviour in Bombus terrestris during an unrelated laboratory experiment. Artificial cuts were not as effective, suggesting that some chemicals in the insects’ saliva could play a part.

A planet is born

Astronomers have captured stunning images of a planet forming at the heart of a spiralling disc of gas and dust near AB Aurigae, a star located around 520 light years from Earth. The snap was taken using a near-infrared camera on the Very Large Telescope in Chile. To get better contrast, researchers used a ‘coronagraph’ to block out the star’s light. But even then, it isn’t possible to glimpse the baby planet itself.

A major reboot for carbon dating

Radiocarbon dating is due to be recalibrated using a slew of new data from around the world, including those from tree rings, lake and ocean sediments, corals and stalagmites. The result could have implications for the estimated ages of many finds — such as Siberia’s oldest modern human fossils, which according to the latest calibrations are 1,000 years younger than previously thought.

Corkscrew light promises higher optical-communication data rates

Researchers have demonstrated that a photonic device can produce twisted pulses of light, meaning that their electromagnetic waves swirl in a vortex. The ring-shaped, microscopic ‘tunable vortex microlaser’ is a step towards faster optical communications. Contrary to the properties of light that are commonly used to encode information — wave phase and amplitude — vortices come in discrete types. This makes it harder to mistake one phase for another, which could help to increase the capacity of optical fibres.

Ancient genomes unravel history of East Asia

The first large ancient-genome studies of East Asia suggest that many of its inhabitants descend from two once-distinct populations. Two research groups analysed dozens of genomes from individuals who lived in the region, including what is now China, between 9,500 and 300 years ago. The genomes show that the two populations remained separate for thousands of years, but over time they began interbreeding. This could solve the mystery of how farming spread through the region — it was adopted as farmers and hunter-gatherers mixed. That’s different from what happened in western Eurasia; ancient-genome studies have found that farmers with Middle Eastern ancestry largely replaced hunter-gatherers in Europe.

A glimpse inside δ Scuti stars

Patterns in the vibrations of stars produce a sort of natural music that offers clues to the stars’ internal structure. Astronomers have identified such patterns for some δ Scuti stars, a group for which this music had been elusive.

Pions form a new kind of helium

The ability to make artificial atoms containing exotic particles in place of electrons is giving physicists a new way of probing fundamental interactions. Now researchers have created and interrogated a novel kind of helium atom in which one of the electrons is replaced by a sub-atomic particle known as a pion. The work could shed light on the nature of both pions and neutrinos – tiny, neutral particles for which certain attributes, including mass, remain relatively poorly understood.

Ultracold atomic comagnetometer joins the search for dark matter

A device will use the ‘fifth state of matter’ to search for axions, a relatively neglected candidate for dark matter. The ‘comagnetometer’ consists of two extremely sensitive magnetic-field detectors made from rubidium-87 atoms. The atoms are cooled to near absolute zero to create a Bose–Einstein condensate, so each essentially acts as a single atom. Because they have different spin states that respond differently to magnetic fields, any variation measured by the two detectors could signal the presence of axions.

First full-genome lion family tree

Geneticists have reconstructed the relationships of 20 lions, including several extinct ones, by sequencing their genomes. The results support the idea that lions migrated out of Africa, like humans did. Researchers took samples from both living and dead animals, including two 30,000-year-old cave lions (Panthera leo spelaea) preserved in permafrost in Siberia and Canada’s Yukon territory. The findings reveal details about how lions took over the world — they were once the most globally widespread mammal species — and where genetic diversity has been quashed by shrinking populations.

Closest black hole to Earth found 'hiding in plain sight'

A black hole merely 1,011 light years from our solar system is the closest ever discovered. Astronomers uncovered its presence while studying the binary star system HR 6819 in the constellation Telescopium. The central star orbits a mysterious object every 40 days or so, and the outer star encircles the central star and the object, which has a mass of 4.2 suns. A regular star of that size would shine brightly — so a black hole is the only option.

Dinosaur tail reveals gigantic swimming predator

A new fossil of one of the most unusual dinosaurs, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, suggests it was a “river monster” powered by a fin-like tail. A new fossil found in Morocco has revealed long spines on the dinosaur’s tail that could have made it work like a giant fin. Hydrodynamic tests with plastic reconstructions of various tail shapes showed that the spinosaurus’s newt-like appendage would produce much more thrust than the tails of other dinosaurs. Spinosaurus aegyptiacus was probably even bigger than Tyrannosaurus rex.

Researchers have built a biological robot

Researchers have built a biological robot that is controlled with part of a rat’s spinal cord. The 6-millimetre robot is made of 3D-printed muscles made of laboratory-grown mouse cells, connected to the section of a rat’s spine that controls the hind legs. Nerves grew from the rat tissue into the muscles and made them contract, and the team could control their ‘Spinobot’ with neurotransmitters. Eventually, the technology could be used in prosthetics, says roboticist Collin Kaufman, but that would probably involve human tissue.

The First Ever Image of Nearby Exoplanet Proxima C?

It’s far from certain, but astronomers might have captured an image of the exoplanet Proxima c, thought to orbit the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri in our nearest neighbouring planetary system. Researchers analysing data from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope identified infrared images that seem to show the planet appearing across several years of routine observations. If genuine, the detection could tell us Proxima c’s size and the angle at which it orbits its star. However, some say it could be the result of random noise in the data — unwanted light from artefacts or background stars.

Black Hole Collision Sheds Light

Gravitational-wave astronomers witnessed a merger between black holes of two greatly different sizes, one nearly four times more massive than the other. The unprecedented observation gave them insight into how one of the black holes spins, which had eluded them in previous gravitational-wave experiments examining mergers of equally sized black holes. The new data promise new ways to test Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Is The Universe Anisotropic?

A map of 850 distant galaxy clusters hints that the Universe might not be uniform. Combining data from US, European and Japanese X-ray space telescopes, researchers have revealed galaxy clusters that were around 30% brighter or fainter than expected, suggesting that their distances had been poorly estimated. Taking these clusters as beacons of the rate of cosmic expansion, the findings would mean that one region is expanding slower than the rest of the Universe, and another is expanding faster.

'Spectacular' artefacts found as Norway ice-patch melts

Ice retreating from a Norwegian mountain pass has uncovered a wealth of artefacts dating back to the Viking era or earlier. Local archaeologists first took note of the pass in 2011, when an ancient woollen tunic was found that could be more than 1,700 years old. The thaw intensified in 2019, revealing everything from stone-built cairns and the remains of a small shelter, to dairy products and reindeer pelts. The ice left many of the items in an exquisite state.

Neutrino clue to antimatter mystery

Physicists have found the strongest evidence yet that neutrinos are fundamentally different from their antimatter counterparts. Researchers produced neutrinos and antineutrinos at an accelerator in Tokai, Japan, and shot them 295 kilometres through the Earth’s crust to the Super-Kamiokande detector. The team found that one flavour of neutrino — muons — morphed into different types of particle at a different rate than did their antimatter twins. If confirmed, the results could help to solve the Universe’s greatest mystery: why there is more matter than antimatter.

Huge dinosaur footprints found on cave ceiling

Dinosaur footprints measuring up to 1.25 metres long have been found deep inside a cave in France — on the roof. The tracks were made 166 million to 168 million years ago, when three dinosaurs traversed the shoreline of a sea. The site was then at the planet’s surface, but geological processes have buried and tilted the sediments, and the prints are now on the cave’s roof, 500 metres underground. Researchers say the footprints probably belong to an unknown species of titanosaur, a category of long-necked herbivorous dinosaur that includes some of the largest animals ever to walk on Earth.

Oldest known fossil of Homo erectus

A skull of an ancient toddler of the species Homo erectus has been found in South Africa and dated to between 2.04 million and 1.95 million years old, pushing back the age of the species by up to 200,000 years. It was also found with the skull of a species on a side-branch of our evolutionary tree, Paranthropus robusta, which suggests many species overlapped in South Africa at the time.

Artificial intelligence decodes the facial expressions of mice

Researchers have used a machine-learning algorithm to decipher the seemingly inscrutable facial expressions of laboratory mice. For example, a mouse experiencing pleasure pulls its nose down towards its mouth, and pulls its ears and jaw forwards. By contrast, when in pain, it pulls back its ears and bulks out its cheeks, and sometimes squints.

Superconducting alloys discovered in extra-terrestrial objects for the first time

For the first time, superconductors have been found in meteorites. The tiny particles of alloys containing indium, lead and tin would have formed in extreme environments, such as during planetary collisions. Researchers analysed meteorites using magnetic-field-modulated microwave spectroscopy to find where tiny amounts of superconducting materials were hiding. They then used a ‘divide-and-conquer’ technique, progressively breaking the meteorites into smaller grains to pinpoint the superconducting particles. In the coldness of space, these particles might affect planetary formation.

Homo antecessor finds its place in our family tree

The enigmatic hominin Homo antecessor has found its place in our family tree thanks to the 800,000-year-old proteins in fossil teeth. Researchers used mass spectrometry to analyse a sliver of enamel from a molar found in Spain’s Gran Dolina cave. The tooth reveals that H. antecessor was a close relative of the last common ancestor of humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Fossil Of Earliest Known Bilaterian: Ikaria wariootia

A fossil the size of a grain of rice appears to be the earliest known bilaterian, the group of animals with two-sided symmetry, two openings and a through-gut. The group includes all vertebrates — including us — and many invertebrate groups. More than 100 Ikaria wariootia and their burrowing tracks were found in South Australia and were dated to more than 555 million years ago.

Fossil Skull Of Oldest Modern Bird

An extraordinary fossil skull belonged to the oldest modern bird ever found. The duck-sized Asteriornis maastrichtensis lived 66.7 million years ago, just 700,000 years before the asteroid impact that killed off all non-avian dinosaurs. Palæontologists were staggered to discover the skull when they used a CT scan to look inside a rock found in Belgium in 2000 by an amateur fossil hunter.

Chance discovery brings quantum computing using standard microchips a step closer

Researchers have discovered “by complete accident” a way to control the nucleus of a single atom using only electric fields. Theorists predicted in 1958 that an oscillating electric field could flip a nucleus, but it had never been observed. The finding hints that it might be possible to use standard silicon microchips as the quantum bits, or qubits, in a quantum computer without messing around with difficult-to-constrain magnetic fields.

Earth’s deepest life scavenges carbon

In one of the deepest layers of Earth’s crust ever explored, researchers are finding life. An analysis of rock samples from the bottom of the Indian Ocean has revealed microbes adapted to life within nutrient-poor hairline fractures in the Earth. Researchers found several species of bacteria, fungi and archaea that live in the rocks and feed on carbon from fragments of amino acids and other organic molecules carried in deep ocean currents.

Iron rain falls on ultra-hot giant exoplanet

A gas-giant exoplanet orbits so close to its star that liquid iron might rain in its skies. Astronomers glimpsed the tell-tale signal of gaseous iron in the spectrum of light observable at the boundary where day turns to night. Where night turns to morning, the signal is gone — hinting that the iron condenses into rainfall at night.

Tiniest dinosaur skull preserved in amber

This bird-like skull, exquisitely preserved in amber for almost 100 million years, belonged to probably the smallest dinosaur ever discovered. The skull is less than 2 centimetres long — suggesting that the creature was the size of a bee hummingbird (Mellisuga helenæ), the smallest living bird.

Postscript:

See World’s smallest dinosaur is probably a lizard

The parrots that understand probabilities

A group of kea, a type of parrot from New Zealand, have been surprising scientists by passing a series of intelligence tests based around probabilities and social cues. Researchers found that kea can outperform monkeys, showing abilities previously seen only in great apes such as humans and chimpanzees.

Early Earth might have been a water world

Early Earth might have been covered with ocean and almost devoid of land. Researchers examined the ratio of oxygen isotopes in a 3.2-billion-year-old slab of the planet’s crust that is exposed in Western Australia. High levels of oxygen-18 in the oldest rock suggest that continents (which absorb that isotope) might not have emerged until between 3 billion and 2.5 billion years ago.

Earth Temporarily Has A Second Moon

Earth has another moon. It is not the kind that will illuminate the night sky. It’s invisible to the naked eye and too tiny to do any classic moon moves, like tugging on the planet’s oceans. But it’s there, orbiting the Earth, accompanying us on our journey around the sun. A pair of astronomers discovered the miniature moon on the night of February 15.

Radar clues spark debate on Egyptian queen

Archaeologists claim to have discovered hidden chambers behind the walls of Tutankhamun’s tomb in a radar survey. The find resurrects a controversial theory that the young king’s burial place connects to a larger tomb containing his mother-in-law Nefertiti, whose resting place has never been found. Although not all researchers are convinced the hidden rooms exist, Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves says if the ancient queen is found to have been buried like a pharaoh, “it could be the biggest archaeological discovery ever”.

Experiment exploiting quantum entanglement breaks distance record

Chinese scientists have transmitted the quantum version of computer memory between two entangled clouds of atoms over 50 kilometres. The feat, which was achieved using standard fibre optic cables, breaks through the 1.3 kilometre barrier achieved by previous quantum memory experiments. Entanglement — dubbed "spooky action at a distance" by Einstein — is a cornerstone of quantum physics. The ability to manipulate the spin, position and momentum of two — or more — entities separated by distance underlies future technologies such as secure communication systems.

Neanderthal skeleton holds clues about ancient death rites

Once we thought that ours was the only species to use rituals to mourn the dead. Then archaeologists discovered hints of pollen from colourful meadow flowers around a Neanderthal skeleton in a remote cave in Iraq. Now, half a century later, new remains of these human cousins have been unearthed at the same "flower burial" site in Shanidar Cave, about 150 kilometres from Mosul.

Blogger Comments:

All 'Out Of Africa' humans have neanderthal DNA in their genomes through interbreeding. Only present-day humans regard neanderthals as a different and less advanced species.

First exoplanet spotted from stellar aurora

For the first time, astronomers have discovered an exoplanet by looking at how it whips up the magnetic field of its star. Researchers examined the radio emissions from a star called GJ 1151 and found an unusually lengthy solar flare that they say could only be caused by a hidden Earth-size planet. It’s tricky to confirm the finding with other exoplanet-detection methods, but if the technique stands up, it offers a whole new way to find distant worlds.

Arrokoth comes into focus

New analysis of data captured last year by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft reveals the distant Solar System object once known as 2014 MU69, now called Arrokoth, in sharp detail. The 36-kilometre-long Kuiper belt object is extremely red, probably because cosmic rays have blasted its surface to create red organic molecules. Its two lobes are thought to have merged gently in the early days of the Solar System, at least four billion years ago.

Oldest ever fossil evidence for modern bees

Nests that are 100 million years old seem to offer the oldest fossil evidence for modern bees. The tunnels and structures inside the nests closely match those created by modern bees in the Halictidae family — also called sweat bees — and particularly to the Halictini tribe. The finding supports other evidence showing that bees and flowers diversified around the same time, during the early Cretaceous.

Australian rock art dated using wasp nests

Dating of carbon in mud wasp nests that line shelters in the Kimberley reveal the distinctive rock art style was created around the end of the last Ice Age, a new study suggests.

A universal law of turbulence

Mathematicians have uncovered a simple universal law to describe the type of turbulence you see when mixing paint or stirring milk into coffee. Researchers harnessed the handy statistical characteristics of randomness to show that these systems, although chaotic, mix with a predictable structure.

New Generation of Dark Matter Experiments Gear Up to Search for Elusive Particle

Three major experiments are poised to take on the challenge of directly detecting dark matter. Two will search for elusive WIMPs, and will be shielded from a cacophony of other particles by being located deep underground in old mines. The other, in an ordinary lab, will attempt to coax out evidence of the uncountable trillions of axions that are theorised to surround us everywhere.

Cosmic Dance Offers Fresh Test for General Relativity

The death dance of a white dwarf star and a pulsar reveal relativistic frame dragging — also known as the Lense-Thirring effect — in which a fast-spinning object distorts the fabric of space-time around it. Such a mind-boggling effect is due to the brain-bending qualities of the two stars. The white dwarf orbits at speeds of up to a million kilometres per hour, making its year only about five hours long. The pulsar itself spins around more than two times per second. The white dwarf is the size of Earth and the pulsar is the size of a city — but both contain more mass than the Sun. The pulsar’s metronome-like radio emissions showed researchers how this extreme relativistic system pulls space-time around it, causing the pulsar’s orbit to wobble exactly as predicted by general relativity.