Science News

A laser weapon capable of shooting down flying drones has been deployed for the very first time by the US Navy, though only for demonstration purposes. Until now, many questions had lingered over whether laser-based weaponry would ever become an effective tool in modern warfare, some of which have now been answered by official footage of the event. Installed aboard the USS Portland, the 150-kilowatt-class Technology Maturation Laser Weapon System Demonstrator (LWSD) was used to successfully disable an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on May 16, 2020, in what was the first use of a high-energy class solid-state laser weapon. "By conducting advanced at-sea tests agai…

Let me be the first to announce the birth of a new science. Lee Smolin et al. explain it in a new paper, Biocosmology: Towards the birth of a new science.

https://phys.org/news/2022-04-space-blocs-future-international-cooperation.html Space Blocs: The future of international cooperation in space is splitting along lines of power on Earth: Even during times of conflict on the ground, space has historically been an arena of collaboration among nations. But trends in the past decade suggest that the nature of cooperation in space is shifting, and fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine has highlighted these changes. 'm an international relations scholar who studies power distributions in space—who the main players are, what capabilities they possess and whom they decide to cooperate with. Some scholars predict…

On the Origin of Hallucinations in Conversational Models: Is it the Datasets or the Models? (2204.07931.pdf (arxiv.org)) In knowledge-based conversational AI systems, "hallucinations" are responses which are factually invalid, fully or partially. It appears that AI does it a lot. This study investigated where these hallucinations come from. As it turns out, the big source is in the databases used to train these AI systems. On average, the responses, on which the systems are trained, contain about 20% factual information, while the rest is hallucinations (~65%), uncooperative (~5%), or uninformative (~10%). On top of this, it turns out that the systems thems…

May have detected dark energy. https://www.inverse.com/science/why-scientists-might-have-detected-dark-energy-on-earth Hypothesized by physicists to drive the accelerating expansion of the universe, dark energy has never been directly observed or measured. Instead, scientists can only make inferences about it from its effects on the space and matter we can see. What’s new — In the paper, the researchers claim that hints of dark energy were detected at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy during an experiment designed to detect dark matter.

https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/26616/perseverance-looks-toward-santa-cruz/ February 14, 2022 Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory performed tests on rocks such as this one to understand why the first attempt by the agency’s Perseverance rover resulted in a powderized sample. A duplicate of the rover’s drill attempted to create cores from crumbly rocks. A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission…

https://www.livescience.com/first-interstellar-object-detected An interstellar object exploded over Earth in 2014, declassified government data reveal By Brandon Specktor published about 9 hours ago Classified data prevented scientists from verifying their discovery for 3 years. A fireball that blazed through the skies over Papua New Guinea in 2014 was actually a fast-moving object from another star system, according to a recent memo(opens in new tab) released by the U.S. Space Command (USSC). The object, a small meteorite measuring just 1.5 feet (0.45 meter) across, slammed into Earth's atmosphere on Jan. 8, 2014, after traveling through space at…

https://phys.org/news/2022-03-hubble-distant-star-distance-billion.html Closeup of the region on the sky, 1/250 of a degree across, where the gravity of a foreground cluster of galaxies magnifies the distant background star—nicknamed Earendil—thousands of times. Credit: NASA/ESA/Brian Welch (JHU)/Dan Coe (STScI)/Alyssa Pagan (STScI). With a fortuitous lineup of a massive cluster of galaxies, astronomers discovered a single star across most of the entire observable Universe. This is the farthest detection of a single star ever. The star may be up to 500 times more massive than the Sun. The discovery has been published today in the journal Nature. Gazin…

If I dont brush my teeth, will I die? Of course not. I THINK therefore I am, not I BRUSH therefore I bruh. The logic is impeccable. The argument against brushing teeth is thus demonstrated.

https://newatlas.com/energy/hb11-laser-fusion-demonstration/ Australian company HB11 says it's well on the way to nuclear fusion energy generation without the radioactive fuels or super-high temperatures kuligssen/Depositphotos HB11 is approaching nuclear fusion from an entirely new angle, using high power, high precision lasers instead of hundred-million-degree temperatures to start the reaction. Its first demo has produced 10 times more fusion reactions than expected, and the company says it's now "the only commercial entity to achieve fusion so far," making it "the global frontrunner in the race to commercialize the holy grail of clean energy." …

https://phys.org/news/2022-04-page-red-climate.html Accelerating global warming is driving a rising tide of impacts that could cause profound human misery and ecological disaster, and there is only one way to avoid catastrophe: drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Spread across 10,000 pages, these are the main takeaways from a trio of UN reports on climate change published in August 2021, February 2022 and on Monday. The three tomes—each with its own roster of hundreds of authors—focus on physical science, impacts and the need to adapt, and finally how to slash carbon pollution. This will be the sixth such trilogy since the Intergovernmental Panel o…

https://phys.org/news/2022-03-spiderweb-galaxy-field-feasting-black.html Spiderweb galaxy field: Feasting black holes caught in galactic spiderweb by Chandra X-ray Center: Often, a spiderweb conjures the idea of captured prey soon to be consumed by a waiting predator. In the case of the "Spiderweb" protocluster, however, objects that lie within a giant cosmic web are feasting and growing, according to data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The Spiderweb galaxy, officially known as J1140-2629, gets its nickname from its web-like appearance in some optical light images. This likeness can be seen in the inset box where data from NASA's Hubble Space T…

The research was published in the journal Nature Communications. Source: University of Tokyo https://newatlas.com/biology/rna-evolution-origin-life/ RNA molecules can replicate in a process like evolution, which may have implications for the origins of life, according to a new study Researchers at the University of Tokyo have created an RNA molecule that can not just replicate, but “evolve” into a diverse range of more complex molecules. This find could plug a major gap in the puzzle of how life on Earth began. Exactly how life arose from non-living matter is one of the most profound mysteries of science. It’s long been hypothesized that RNA acted…

https://phys.org/news/2022-03-video-astronomers-reveal-remarkable-simulations.html It looks like fireflies flickering in the darkness. Slowly, more and more amass, lighting up the screen in large chunks and clusters. But this is not a video about insects. It's a simulation of the early universe, a time after the Big Bang when the cosmos transformed from a place of utter darkness to a radiant, light-filled environment. The stunning video is part of a large suite of simulations described in a series of three papers accepted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Created by researchers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard &a…

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/brain-computer-interface-als-beer-b2043126.html ‘I want a beer’: Paralysed man communicates first words in months using brain implant A completely paralysed man, who was left unable to communicate for months after losing the ability to even move his eyes, has used a brain implant to ask his caregivers for a beer. A completely paralysed man, who was left unable to communicate for months after losing the ability to even move his eyes, has used a brain implant to ask his caregivers for a beer. Composing sentences at a rate of just one character per minute, the man also asked to listen to the band Tool “loud”, requested a…

https://phys.org/news/2022-03-octopuses-squid-crabs-emotions.html Octopuses can solve complex puzzles and show a preference for different individuals, but whether they, and other animals and invertebrates, have emotions is being hotly debated and could shake up humans' moral decision-making, says a York University expert in animal minds. Most countries don't recognize invertebrates, such as octopuses, crabs, lobsters and crayfish, as sentient beings that can feel pain, but the United Kingdom is considering amendments to its animal welfare legislation that would recognize this. "A London School of Economics (LSE) report commissioned by the U.K. government fo…

https://phys.org/news/2022-03-nasa-roman-mission-cosmic-theories.html NASA's Roman mission will test competing cosmic acceleration theories by Ashley Balzer, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center: These six cubes show the simulated distribution of galaxies at redshifts 9, 8, 5, 3, 2, and 1, with the corresponding cosmic ages shown. As the universe expands, the density of galaxies within each cube decreases, from more than half a million at top left to about 80 at lower right. Each cube is about 100 million light-years across. Galaxies assembled along vast strands of gas separated by large voids, a foam-like structure echoed in the present-day universe on…

Weather is OK. It's a go. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59782057 Live:

https://phys.org/news/2022-03-scientists-stephen-hawking-black-hole.html Scientists may have solved Stephen Hawking's black hole paradox Researchers may have solved Professor Stephen Hawking's famous black hole paradox—a mystery that has puzzled scientists for almost half a century. According to two new studies, something called "quantum hair" is the answer to the problem. In the first paper, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, researchers demonstrated that black holes are more complex than originally thought and have gravitational fields that hold information about how they were formed. The researchers showed that matter collapsing …

Great Oxygenation Event: MIT Scientists’ New Hypothesis for One of the Grand Mysteries of Science (scitechdaily.com)

https://phys.org/news/2022-03-deforestation-brazilian-amazon-february.html Record deforestation in Brazilian Amazon in February: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon set a new record for the month of February, according to official data released Friday, the latest sign of a surge in destruction under President Jair Bolsonaro. Satellite images show 199 square kilometers (77 square miles) of forest cover—an area more than half the size of the US capital Washington—were lost in Brazil's Amazon region last month, according to Brazilian space agency INPE's Deter monitoring program. That was the highest figure for February since the program began in August …

Too complex to understand. Let AI to come up with patterns. The evolution, evolvability and engineering of gene regulatory DNA | Nature

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-07/russian-shelling-destroys-ukraine-atomic-lab-built-with-u-s?fbclid=IwAR0cTlxe8stoafLUeex4Ac4g2Xd6F6PMjOMLz2rYBW8R1DmEcDiD5r7H4y8

"Scientists discovered an absolutely massive bacterium that can be seen without the aid of a microscope and lurks among the mangroves of Grande-Terre in the Caribbean, Science magazine reported." That comment is from a Live Science article about a new bacterium, 2 centimeters long, that was recently discovered in the Caribbean. Enjoy!

This project aims to produce 300,000 tonnes annually of hydrogen and derivatives from solar and wind electricity and water. The African nation aiming to be a hydrogen superpower - BBC News