Science

Astronomers have discovered a extraordinary celestial construction site hiding behind a natural magnifying glass in space and what they've found is unlike anything seen before. A cluster of at least 11 galaxies, all building stars at a ferocious rate in the early universe, has been caught in the act of becoming one of the most massive structures in the universe.

Astronomers have used a special class of ancient, pulsating stars as celestial lighthouses to map the earliest chapter of our Galaxy's life and what they've found is rewriting what we thought we knew about how the Milky Way was born. By building the largest ever catalogue of these stellar beacons and tracing their movements back billions of years, the team has uncovered surprising similarities between our Galaxy's earliest structures, and even found evidence of the same story playing out in our nearest galactic neighbour.

Del Bigtree and Toby Rogers, the authoritarians behind the “medical freedom” movement 

The post Why Should You Worry About My Vaccinated Child If Being Anti-Vaccine Works So Well first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Scientists have built a working model of Earth without any life on it and what they found might change how we search for aliens. By simulating 4.5 billion years of our planet's evolution minus every bacterium, plant, and creature that ever existed, they've created a new tool for spotting genuinely habitable worlds among the thousands of rocky planets soon to be studied by the next generation of space telescopes.

As part of a Golden Age of exploration and discovery, NASA announced Friday the agency is increasing its cadence of missions under the Artemis program to achieve the national objective of returning American astronauts to the Moon and establishing an enduring presence.

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and has proudly boasted about this since time immemorial, with its scientific confirmation occurring by Galileo Galilei in 1610. It was later found that Jupiter has a bulging equator caused by its rapid rotation, turbulent atmosphere, and complex interior mechanisms despite its massive size, and scientists have even measured its “waistline” down to a tenth of a kilometer. Now, imagine being the largest planet in the solar system and you’re told you’re not as big as you thought. Where probably most humans would be thrilled to find this out, how do you respond if you’re Jupiter?

The radio telescope LOFAR, with a major contribution from Leiden Observatory, has produced the most detailed radio map of the Universe ever made. Never before have so many cosmic radio sources been captured in a single survey: 13.7 million.

Researchers in Brazil have discovered another tektite field. Tektites are gravel-sized chunks of natural glass formed by impacts and spread over a wide area. Their presence indicates that a powerful impact occurred 6 million years ago.

I’ve said several times that the best rock/pop song I know of is “A Day in the Life,” the last track on the Beatles’ 1967 “Sgt. Pepper” album.  As usual, its composition is credited to “Lennon/McCartney”, but in this case the lyrics and melody are mainly from Lennon. But McCartney and also Harrison and Ringo contributed, with important additions by producer George Martin. (I’ve put the released version at the bottom.)

The video below by David Hartley, called “The world’s greatest song that simply shouldn’t exist”, was put up only a month ago. It shows how the song was inspired and constructed, and includes verbal quotes from the Beatles (and George Martin), early takes of the song, and snippets of the final song itself.

Why shouldn’t it exist? You can see how a lot of accidents, both sung and played, found themselves into the song, with sporadic suggestions from Martin and the boys, and yet the song worked together not just as a whole, but as an “organic whole,” looking as if it were planned.

Far from it!  At that time there were only four tracks available to mix for the final version, and a lot of manipulation was needed.  The ending was particularly problematic, and how George Martin helped finish it, using half of a full orchestra at Ringo’s suggestion, is fantastic. (Martin actually wrote all the orchestral parts that sound like random noise.) Likewise for the final extended chord, which began as a sung note but wound up, at Paul’s suggestion, with a long instrumental chord played on three pianos and a harmonium.

If you like the song, this analysis is fascinating.

 

There’s also a breakdown of the song by Rick Beato, which you can see here (unlike wasn’t allowed to play snippets of the song). Beato calls it “the best Beatles song.” He’s right, which means it’s the best rock song ever.

I’ve put below a screenshot from Hartley’s video apparently showing an early take of the song, with Paul on Hammond Organ, John on piano, Ringo on congas, and George on guitar:

Here’s the final released version (official video):

Astronomers have spotted what may be one of the universe’s earliest barred spiral galaxies — a striking cosmic structure forming just 2 billion years after the Big Bang. The galaxy, COSMOS-74706, dates back about 11.5 billion years and contains a stellar bar, a bright, linear band of stars and gas stretching across its center, similar to the one in our own Milky Way.

Uranus is a planet that seems to roll around on its side as it orbits the Sun. That's because it's tipped over, with an axial tilt of 97.8 degrees. That weird tilt gave the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) a chance to probe the ionosphere using the Near Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec) instrument. An international team of astronomers used the data to map the vertical structure of that region and detect faint auroral displays.

As it faces yet another set of delays, NASA’s Artemis programme is being shaken up, delaying an actual moon landing in favour of smaller, faster steps forward

Researchers at Nagoya University have created a more efficient iron-based photocatalyst that could reduce the need for rare and expensive metals in advanced chemistry. Unlike earlier designs, the new catalyst uses far fewer costly chiral ligands while still precisely controlling the three dimensional structure of molecules.

Scientists have unveiled a breakthrough way to turn natural gas—long burned as fuel—into valuable chemical building blocks for medicines and other high-demand products. By designing a clever iron-based catalyst powered by LED light, researchers managed to activate stubborn molecules like methane and transform them into complex compounds, even creating the hormone therapy drug dimestrol directly from methane for the first time.

Frailty can typically only be lessened through lifestyle changes, but a stem cell therapy seems to target the underlying causes of the condition, boosting the mobility of frail older people

Neuron-powered computer chips can now be easily programmed to play a first-person shooter game, bringing biological computers a step closer to useful applications

Doug Hayes of Richmond, Virginia, has sent some dance photos (H. sapiens in action). Doug’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

The most recent photoshoot with Starr Foster Dance. The company is currently rehearsing new choreography for their upcoming show, “Shouting Distance” which will premiere April 9th – 12th at the Firehouse Theater. Once again, my friend Starrene Foster asked the dancers to perform several leaps, some derived from the choreography that will be performed during the show.

The core company members (L to R) Sarah Carrington, Roya Baker-Vahdani, Madison Ernstes, Molly Huey, Shannon Comerford:

A basic group jump. While it looks simple, it took a couple of tries to get everyone off the ground at the same time:

Roya, Molly and Shannon strike a dramatic pose:

Shannon, Roya and Molly:

Sarah and Madison defy gravity:

Madison makes it look effortless:

Another incredible leap by Madison:

Roya sitting on air:

An aerial split by Shannon:

Molly gives a new meaning to “high kick”:

Floating through air with the greatest of ease:

Molly does an easy leap:

Starr had an idea to photograph Shannon looking into a hallway. The door was featureless, painted dark gray and the floor where Shannon is standing was the same light gray as the hallway floor and walls. Starr asked if I could make the door look like an apartment door and make the floor hardwood. Rather than spend several hours looking for proper flooring and doors, then doing the tedious compositing in Photoshop, I turned to AI. Google’s Gemini AI has a photo editing feature called “Nano Banana” – I’m not making this up. Nano Banana is incorporated into the latest version of Adobe Photoshop, but one has to pay to use it when editing high resolution images. By logging into Gemini AI directly, Nano Banana is free to use unless you need to use some of the more advanced editing features. It only took two prompts to get the result I wanted and only about three minutes to get the final image. There is a second image featuring Shannon at the door, but the AI made two different-looking doors, and the hardwood floor was different in each. It took about three prompts to get Nano Banana to understand that the doors and floors should match, but it finally “understood” and gave me what I wanted. I have been using AI for the past few months to restore old faded and damaged photos. The results have been amazing and saved hours of tedious retouch work in Photoshop. While AI has gotten better, it still requires human input to correct some errors. In the photo of Shannon, the AI put a doorknob and deadbolt on the right side of the door. Sometimes I wonder if the computers are just screwing with us to see if we notice.

Photo information: Sony A1 II mirrorless camera body, Sony GM 24-70 zoom lens, Westcott 400 electronic flash units, Westcott wireless flash controller. Photos edited with Adobe Photoshop and Google’s Gemini AI. The electronic flash units have a “freeze” mode which fires the flash in sync with the camera which is in burst mode – about 15 frames per second or the equivalent of a 1/10,000 of a second shutter speed. ISO 1250.

Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, may have been born in a colossal cosmic crash. New research suggests Titan formed when two older moons slammed together hundreds of millions of years ago—an event so violent it reshaped Saturn’s entire moon system and may have indirectly sparked the formation of its iconic rings. Clues come from Titan’s unusual orbit, its surprisingly smooth surface, and the strange behavior of the tumbling moon Hyperion.

Pouring 65,000 litres of sodium hydroxide into the Gulf of Maine removed up to 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere without harming wildlife, according to the researchers behind an ocean alkalinity enhancement test

The dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid, but does that mean we risk suffering the same fate - and should you be worried about the possibility? Leah Crane sets the matter straight