Science

Leading archaeologists share the biggest recent advances in our understanding of human evolution, and their hopes for the exciting finds the next five years may have in store

Happy Tuesday; it’s December 10, 2024, and Coynezaa is just around the corner. There’s another holiday, too, but it celebrates a myth, whereas I am real.

It has been a hectic three days, but also fun: giving two talks (I fell off the stage during the first one), touring around Katowice, and eating large quantities of hearty Silesian food. I have a gazillion photos, but, as I’m cooling my heels in the airport in Frankfurt, I have no time to post them—save one. And that is the picture below, showing yours truly eating a classic German comestible in the airport.

If I look a wreck, I am. My plane left Katowice for Frankfurt at 6 a.m., which meant boarding at 5:30, which meant getting up at 2:00 a.m. and leaving my hotel, some distance from the planes, at 3 a.m.

I went to bed at 9, hoping for five hours of sleep, but woke up at 12:15, soon after midnight, and what with the excitement of impending travel it was clear that I wasn’t going back to sleep. So I watched CNN instead (the only English t.v. channel) to discover, via Anderson Cooper, that the police had actually caught the man accused of shooting health executive Brian Thompson. When the law caught up to him, the suspect, one Luigi Mangioni of New Jersey, was chowing down at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.  And it doesn’t look good for him:

The Altoona officers who took Mr. Mangione into custody found that he had several telltale items that might tie him to Mr. Thompson’s killing, a crime that has riveted the nation while exposing Americans’ deep-seated anger toward the U.S. health insurance industry.

Mr. Mangione, officials said, had a gun and a silencer similar to the ones used in the Dec. 4 shooting, and a fake driver’s license that matched one used by the man suspected in the killing.

He also carried with him a three-page handwritten manifesto condemning the health care industry for putting profits over patients.

“These parasites had it coming,” it said, according to a senior law enforcement official who saw the document. It added: “I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done.”

The document specifically mentioned UnitedHealthcare, the insurance giant where Mr. Thompson was chief executive, noting its size and the amount of revenue it takes in, the official said.

Yes, he’s presumed innocent until found guilty, but I’m here to tell you that the probability of any other verdict seems nil. He’s 26 and will surely, if convicted, spend the rest of his natural life behind bars.

Read more about the pinch at the archived link here. It was a nifty bit of police work, made easier by Mangione pulling his mask down just one time, when he was flirting with a woman at a hostel.  But once was enough: look at the hostel picture and compare it to the many circulating pictures of Mangione. I’m glad he’s caught, for nobody deserves vigilante execution, which is capital punishment without a trial. In fact, I don’t believe anybody deserves execution at all. Life without parole is more than enough, and remember that some people can reform.

But they’re very sad about the arrest over at P********a, where the fulminating miscreants are not only delighted, but have been egged on in their hatred by the Chief Miscreant himself, who urges his baying hounds before pulling the trigger to first find out who heads healthcare corporations that deny claims.  Then, as the capo says, “After you’ve followed the chain of decisions, then you can consider terminating some rich a-hole. It’s the polite thing to do.”

Indeed, nothing makes you look better to “progressives” than urging your readers to murder rich people, preferably CEOs of healthcare corporations.

In other news, where is Bashar al-Assad? Is he dead, as some suspect? Or has he fled to his pals in Russia?

Paul Krugman has written his last column for the NYT, and, over in France, the right-wing Marine Le Pen is plotting to topple the French government and replace it with one far more to the right. Sound familiar?

There are reports of continuing peace talks between Israel and Hamas, but I don’t think they’ll amount to much. If they result in releasing thousands of convicted Palestinian terrorists from jail, while not letting all the hostages go—indeed, if a settlement leaves anything of Hamas to govern Gaza, Israel will have lost.

And that’s the nooz till I get home and take a day to recover.

Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili raises an old question: can animals think of the future?

Hili: I do not see the future.
A: It’s around the corner.

Hili: Nie widzę przyszłości.
Ja: Jest za rogiem.

Researchers found that adolescents with more symptoms of gaming addiction showed lower brain activity in the region involved in decision-making and reward processing; this blunted response to reward anticipation is associated with higher symptoms of gaming addiction over time and suggests that reduced sensitivity to rewards, in particular non-gaming rewards, may play a role in problematic gaming.

Helical structures are ubiquitous across biology, from the double-stranded helix of DNA to how heart muscle cells spiral in a band. Inspired by this twisty ladder, researchers have developed an artificial polymer that organizes itself into a controlled helix. Helical structures are ubiquitous across biology, from the double-stranded helix of DNA to how heart muscle cells spiral in a band. Inspired by this twisty ladder, researchers have developed an artificial polymer that organizes itself into a controlled helix.

The anthropic principle states that the fundamental parameters of the Universe such as the strength of the fundamental forces, have been finely tuned to support life. Whether this is true or not or whether it is even worthy of scientific investigation has been hotly debated. A new paper proposes some ways that this may now be tested and perhaps brings the topic under scientific scrutiny for the first time.

The idea of the anthropic principle was first suggested by physicist Brandon Carter in 1973. The proposal by Carter was tabled at a conference to mark the 500th anniversary of the birth of Nicolaus Copernicus. The principle attempts to rationalise the apparent ‘fine tuning’ of various universal parameters that support a cosmos where observers like humans can exist. If the parameters are slightly different, life may not have evolved.

Nicolaus Copernicus portrait from Town Hall in Torun (Thorn), 1580. Credit: frombork.art.pl

There are two versions; the Weak Anthropic Principle which postulates we observe the universe as being compatible with our very existence because, the argument goes, we wouldn’t be here to observe it if not! Then there is the Strong Anthropic Principle which goes much further stating simply that the universe must have parameters that make life possible. 

Science of philosophy? Either way, for a theory to be of any use, it must be possible to test it. Until now it’s been thought the anthropic principle was beyond the possibility of being tested. The paper, published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics was authored by Nemanja Kaloper from the University of California and Alexander Westphal from the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron. They propose for the first time, a way that the principle can be experimentally tested.

The AP proposes that if the universe is to develop as a place that our carbon based life can evolve, it must have begun with a very specific set of parameters. The gravitational constant, Planck’s constant and the electron charge are such parameters that, if they had been different at the beginning of time, the universe would have been very different, very different indeed. 

Kaloper and Westphal identify the initial parameters implied by the anthropic principle and are able to model how the universe would have evolved. It would then be possible to compare the result to the cosmos observed today. Any variance between the model and the observed universe would provide a measure of the validity of the principle. 

A computer model of the large-scale structure of the universe using the Illustris simulator. This image depicts the dark matter and gas involved in forming galaxies and galaxy clusters, as well as the filaments connecting them. Image Credit: Illustris TNG

There are a number of predictions the team say can be used as a measure including the cosmic inflation and the nature of dark matter. Perhaps frustratingly close now to proving, in some way, the validity of the principle yet we are still a few more years away from being able to acquire all the necessary evidence. Until then, the anthropic principle remains a very interesting curiosity and one that, since the publication of this latest paper, does at least deserve our attention. 

Source : Falsifying anthropics

The post Has the Universe Been Designed to Support Life? Now We Have a Way to Test it! appeared first on Universe Today.

As a species, we’ve come to the awareness that we’re a minuscule part of a vast Universe defined by galaxy superclusters and the large-scale structure of the Universe. Driven by a healthy intellectual curiosity, we’re examining our surroundings and facing the question posed by Nature: how did everything get this way?

We only have incremental answers to that huge, almost infinitely-faceted question. And the incremental answers are unearthed by our better instruments, including space telescopes, which get better and more capable as time passes.

Enter the James Webb Space Telescope.

One of the reasons NASA and their partners built and launched the James Webb Space Telescope is to study the history of galaxy formation and to understand how they evolved into what we see today. That involves observing galaxies, galaxy clusters, galaxy superclusters, and the complex network of sheets, voids, and filaments that comprise the large-scale structure of the Universe. It also involves observing proto-clusters, the early stage of a galaxy cluster. They’re like building blocks for the cosmic web, which collapse and merge to form clusters and superclusters.

The Spiderweb protocluster is an ancient and well-studied object in the early Universe. More than 100 individual galaxies are forming a cluster at redshift z = 2.16, meaning it took more than 10 billion years for its light to reach us.

“We are observing the build-up of one the largest structures in the Universe, a city of galaxies in construction.”

Jose M. Pérez-Martínez, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias

Protoclusters are one key to understanding the Universe, and in two new papers, researchers present the results of the JWST’s observations of the Spiderweb protocluster. Among other things, the results show that gravity doesn’t play as large a role as thought in the formation of a cluster.

The difficulty in observing the Spiderweb is that it’s obscured by a healthy amount of cosmic dust. The dust blocks visible light but allows infrared light through. Since the JWST is an enormously powerful infrared telescope, its gaze has revealed things previously hidden from astronomers.

“We are observing the build-up of one the largest structures in the Universe, a city of galaxies in construction,” explained Jose M. Pérez-Martínez of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and the Universidad de La Laguna in Spain. “We know that most galaxies in local galaxy clusters (the biggest metropolises of the Universe) are old and not very active, whereas in this work we are looking at these objects during their adolescence. As this city in construction grows, their physical properties will also be affected. Now, Webb is giving us new insights into the build-up of such structures for the first time.”

The JWST can observe hydrogen gas more thoroughly than other telescopes. Astronomers often observe hydrogen-alpha (h-alpha) emissions to probe galaxies. h-alpha emissions are a specific type of light emitted when electrons transition between energy levels. However, there’s another type of infrared hydrogen emission called Paschen-beta emissions (Pa-beta) that the JWST can observe. It’s emitted by different electron transitions in hydrogen and is a valuable tracer of the star formation rate (SFR) in galaxies. While the JWST isn’t specifically designed to single out these emissions, it can observe the infrared wavelengths that include the Pa-beta line.

The two new papers based on the JWST observations are:

• JWST/NIRCam Pa-beta Narrowband Imaging Reveals Ordinary Dust Extinction for H? Emitters within the Spiderweb Protocluster at z = 2.16
• JWST/NIRCam Narrowband Survey of Pa-beta Emitters in the Spiderweb Protocluster at z = 2.16

These observations revealed the presence of new, previously undetected galaxies in the protocluster that were obscured by dust.

Using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers has found new galaxies in the Spiderweb protocluster. They found that gravitational interactions in these dense regions are not as important as previously thought. This annotated image shows the galaxy distribution in the Spiderweb protocluster as seen by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera). The galaxies are annotated by white circles, and the collection of gravitationally-bound galaxies is identified in the centre of the image. A selection of these galaxies are featured as individual close-ups at the bottom of the image. Image Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, H. Dannerbauer

“As expected, we found new galaxy cluster members, but we were surprised to find more than expected,” explained Rhythm Shimakawa of Waseda University in Japan. “We found that previously-known galaxy members (similar to the typical star-forming galaxies like our Milky Way galaxy) are not as obscured or dust-filled as previously expected, which also came as a surprise.”

The characteristics of the dust show that gravitational interactions aren’t playing as large a role as thought. If there were gravity-driven mergers, the dust production would be higher as mergers trigger rapid SFRs. However, these observations show that the dust is being produced smoothly rather than abruptly.

“This can be explained by the fact that the growth of these typical galaxies is not triggered primarily by galaxy interactions or mergers that induce star-formation,” added Helmut Dannerbauer of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Spain. “We now figure this can instead be explained by star formation that is fueled through gas accumulating at different locations all across the object’s large-scale structure.”

“These results support the scenario for which dust production within the main galaxy population of this protocluster is driven by secular star formation activities fueled by smooth gas accretion across its large-scale structure,” the authors write in the first paper. “This downplays the role of gravitational interactions in boosting star formation and dust production within the Spiderweb protocluster, in contrast with observations in higher redshift and less evolved protocluster cores.”

“We find no correlation between the dustiness of our sample of HAEs and their distribution in phase space (spectroscopic sample) or as a function of the projected clustercentric radius or local density,” the authors of the first paper explain. If gravity-driven mergers were behind the star and dust formation, it would be clumpy.

The second paper’s original goal was to make a deep-line survey aimed at Pa-beta emitters (PBEs). It used a unique narrow-band filter on the NIRCam that’s less sensitive to dust extinction. They ended up detecting new member candidates in the Spiderweb Protocluster. Interestingly, not all of the h? emitters are also Pa-beta emitters.

The researchers narrowed their Pa-beta emitters down to 41 sources. Only 17 of those are also confirmed as h? emitters. “The remaining 24 objects are considered to be unconfirmed candidates associated with the Spiderweb protocluster,” the authors write. “These PBE candidates are still at risk of foreground or background emitters other than PBEs; therefore, further follow-up studies are needed to establish that they are protocluster members.”

Finding more members of the Spiderweb protocluster and finding that gravity isn’t as important as thought is just a beginning. These are incremental answers on our path to understanding how the Universe evolved into what we see today. Science is a journey, and as is so often the case on the journey, more observations are the next step.

“Follow-up confirmations and characterizations of the PBE candidates will provide a better understanding of the total star formation rate in the Spiderweb protocluster, the environmental dependence of galaxy formation, and a transition process from a protocluster to a bona fide cluster of galaxies,” the authors of the second paper write in their conclusion.

The researchers intend to follow up this work with more spectroscopic observations form the JWST. Those observations should provide additional confirmation of the Spiderweb’s new members.

The post Webb Sees a Supercluster of Galaxies Coming Together appeared first on Universe Today.

A NASA Hubble Space Telescope observation program called OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy) obtains long-term baseline observations of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in order to understand their atmospheric dynamics and evolution.

Imagine an artificial intelligence (AI) model that can watch and understand moving images with the subtlety of a human brain. Now, scientists have made this a reality by creating MovieNet: an innovative AI that processes videos much like how our brains interpret real-life scenes as they unfold over time.

Imagine an artificial intelligence (AI) model that can watch and understand moving images with the subtlety of a human brain. Now, scientists have made this a reality by creating MovieNet: an innovative AI that processes videos much like how our brains interpret real-life scenes as they unfold over time.

The term quasar comes from quasi-stellar objects, a name that reflected our uncertainty about their nature. The first quasars were discovered solely because of their radio emissions, with no corresponding visual objects. This is surprising since quasars blaze with the light of trillions of stars.

In recent observations, the Hubble examined a historical quasar named 3C 273, the first quasar to be linked with a visual object.

Maarten Schmidt was the California Institute of Technology astronomer who first connected the radio emissions from 3C 273 with a visual object back in 1963. At the time, it looked just like a star through the powerful telescopes available, though its light was red-shifted. Schmidt’s discovery showed us the true nature of these extraordinary objects, and now we know of about one million quasars.

A quasar is an extremely luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN) powered by a supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the center of a galaxy. Accretion disks of gas form around SMBHs, and the swirling gas heats up and releases electromagnetic energy. Only a small percentage of galaxies have quasars and their luminosities can be thousands of times greater than a galaxy like the Milky Way.

3C 273 is about 2.5 billion light-years away and is the most distant object visible in a backyard telescope. Recently, Hubble captured its best view of the quasar, revealing previously unseen details in its vicinity.

The quasar’s blinding light makes its surroundings difficult to discern. However, astronomers figured out a way to use Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) instrument to make coronagraphic observations of the region. The coronograph allowed astronomers to look eight times closer to the black hole than ever before.

The researchers found a new core jet, a core blob, and other smaller blobs. Their results are in a research letter titled “3C 273 Host Galaxy with Hubble Space Telescope Coronagraphy.” It’s published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, and the lead author is Bin Ren, who also happens to be associated with the California Institute of Technology.

Hubble’s STIS coronagraph allowed astronomers to get a clearer look at the region surrounding the quasar 3C 273. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Bin Ren (Université Côte d’Azur/CNRS)

By blocking out the quasar’s blinding glare, Hubble was able to better examine its surroundings. The astronomers found weird filaments, lobes, and a mysterious L-shaped structure. These are all probably the results of the SMBH devouring small galaxies.

“We have detected a more symmetric core component, CC, for the host galaxy of 3C 273, in addition to confirming the existing large-scale asymmetric components IC and OC that were previously identified in HST/ACS coronagraphy from Martel et al. (2003),” the authors explain in their research letter.

These four images from the research show some of the detail uncovered by the new coronagraphic observations. (a) contains original data. (b) is the isophote model. (c) and (d) are isophote-removed data. (An isophote is a curve on an illuminated surface that connects points of equal brightness.) CC is a newly identified symmetric Core Component, IJ is the Inner Jet, CJ is the newly observed Core Jet, CB is the Core Blob, JC is the Jet Component, and b1, b2 and b3 are newly observed blobs. The filament in panel d is also newly observed. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Bin Ren (Université Côte d’Azur/CNRS)

“With the STIS coronagraphic observations, we also identify a core blob (CB) component, as well as other point-sourcelike objects, after removing isophotes from the host galaxy,” the authors continue. “The nature of the newly identified components, as well as the point source-like objects, would require observations from other telescopes for further study.”

There are also filamentary structures to the northeast, east, and west of the galactic nucleus. They extend as far as 10 kiloparsecs (32,600 light-years) from the nucleus. The authors explain that they’re similar to structures observed in other galaxies, where they’re thought to be multiphase gas that’s condensing out of the intergalactic medium. This gas could be fuelling AGN feedback. AGN feedback is a self-regulating process that links the energy released by the AGN to the surrounding gaseous medium.

Previous observations of the same quasar 22 years ago allowed the authors to compare images and constrain some properties of the previously observed Inner Jet, which is 300,000 light-years long. “We witness a potential trend that the motion is faster when it is further out,” they write.

This figure from the research shows 200 different randomly sampled components of the jet as grey lines. As the figure shows, the jets move faster the further they are from the source. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Bin Ren (Université Côte d’Azur/CNRS)

This fascinating object begs for more observations to better understand what’s happening. The authors explain that we need methods and telescopes with better inner working angles (IWA) to do that. Both the Hubble and the JWST can do it. “With smaller IWAs for both telescopes, we can both confirm the existence of closest-in components and constrain their physical properties from multi-band imaging. In high-energy observations, we can better characterize such structures,” the authors explain.

“With the fine spatial structures and jet motion, Hubble bridged a gap between the small-scale radio interferometry and large-scale optical imaging observations, and thus we can take an observational step towards a more complete understanding of quasar host morphology. Our previous view was very limited, but Hubble is allowing us to understand the complicated quasar morphology and galactic interactions in detail,” said lead author Ren.

“In the future, looking further at 3C 273 in infrared light with the James Webb Space Telescope might give us more clues,” said Ren.

The post Hubble Gets its Best Look At the First Quasar appeared first on Universe Today.

Eventually I will post all the talks, pro and con, at the Oxford Union’s debate on November 28, whose topic was this:

“This House Believes Israel Is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide.”

Speaking against the motion here is Jonathan Sacerdoti, identified by Wikipedia as

“a British broadcaster, journalist, and TV producer. He covers stories relating to the United Kingdom and Europe, as well as terrorism and extremism stories, race relations, Middle East analysis and the British royal family.  He is also a campaigner against antisemitism.”

His father was a survivor of the Holocaust.

I wanted to put this speech up now because it is uncensored, showing the abuse to which the pro-Israel speakers were subject, an abuse not evident in what was apparently a censored clip of Natasha Hausdorff’s speech the other day. I think it likely that this clip will be taken down, for it makes the Oxford Union look really really bad. 

This video, complete with unceasing shouts and attacks on the speaker, shows how shameful the audience really was, a shame that also devolves upon the Union’s moderators, who were clearly on the side of the proposition although they are supposed to be neutral. They do very little to quell the audience’s despicable treatment of the speakers.  Should not repeated abusers be ejected?

As you know, the proposition passed by a large proportion, with the audience packed with those who hate Israel, and with Jewish students apparently afraid to attend.

Sacerdoti’s arguments are good, and similar to Hausdorff’s, but of course he didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell with an audience like that.

Have a listen, even if you don’t care much about the arguments, for this is, after all, supposed to be one of the most well-run and respected groups at Oxford University.

msn quotes Hausdorff on the abuse dished out in Arabic:

She detailed how Arab speakers on her team were subjected to abuse in Arabic, which she only learned about after the event.

“They were called ‘traitors’ and ‘collaborators’,” she said. “One of the speakers confided in me that the nature of that abuse and the threats have him flashbacks to a time he was targeted for being a collaborator in the West Bank.”

Pretrained large-scale AI models need to 'forget' specific information for privacy and computational efficiency, but no methods exist for doing so in black-box vision-language models, where internal details are inaccessible. Now, researchers addressed this issue through a strategy based on latent context sharing, successfully getting an image classifier to forget multiple classes it was trained on. Their findings could expand the use cases of large-scale AI models while safeguarding end users' privacy.

Fences are an effective stationary method of corralling livestock, but their sharp borders can create sudden changes in native grassland vegetation and the pollinators and birds that live there. Virtual, GPS-based fences may be the nature-friendly future of fencing, creating more natural grassland habitat, finds new research.

Dust storms on Mars could one day pose dangers to human astronauts, damaging equipment and burying solar panels. New research gets closer to predicting when extreme weather might erupt on the Red Planet.

Physicists have devised an algorithm that provides a mathematical framework for how learning works in lattices called mechanical neural networks.

Physicists have devised an algorithm that provides a mathematical framework for how learning works in lattices called mechanical neural networks.

To help improve punctuality by understanding how delays propagate and identifying critical trains, researchers have developed a new network-based method.

To help improve punctuality by understanding how delays propagate and identifying critical trains, researchers have developed a new network-based method.

Modeling how cars deform in a crash, how spacecraft responds to extreme environments, or how bridges resist stress could be made thousands of times faster thanks to new artificial intelligence that enables personal computers to solve massive math problems that generally require supercomputers.