The Overnight News Digest is a nightly series chronicling the eschaton. Saturday’s focus is on science.
GizmodoScientists Uncover New Organic Molecules Coming Off Saturn's Moon Enceladus
Scientists have discovered nitrogen- and oxygen- containing organic molecules in ice grains blown out by Saturn’s moon Enceladus, according to a new study.
Gas giants Saturn and Jupiter are orbited by some moons that almost seem more like planets themselves. One such moon is Saturn’s Enceladus, an icy orb thought to contain a very deep subsurface water ocean beneath a thick icy crust. Finding organic molecules on Enceladus is exciting, since water plus energy plus organic molecules might be the ingredients for life.
Enceladus blasted the material out in plumes from cracks in its south polar crust. The plumes carry a mixture of material from the moon’s rocky core and subsurface ocean. The Cassini mission flew through these plumes in 2004 and 2008, gathering data on the material with two of its instruments, the Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) and the Cosmic Dust Analyser (CDA). For the new study, researchers based in Germany and the United States took a deeper look at the CDA’s data and found new organic compounds, according to the paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Here's More Evidence That Earth Got Hit by Something Huge 12,800 Years Ago
New evidence from South Africa is adding further credence to the idea that a large asteroid or comet struck Earth during the Pleistocene—an event that possibly triggered the extinction of many large animals while also disrupting human populations at a global scale.
Along with locations in North and South America, Greenland, Western Europe, and the Middle East, we can now add southern Africa to the list of places where scientists have uncovered evidence of a calamitous event that happened 12,800 years ago.
New research published this week in the science journal Palaeontologia Africana describes the presence of excessive platinum in sedimentary material extracted from a site in South Africa dating back to this period.
Study: Nuclear War Between India and Pakistan Would Trigger Global Starvation
In addition to killing as many as 125 million people, a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would unleash mass starvation around the world due to the ensuing climate impacts, according to a disturbing new study.
As if we need to be reminded of the horrors of nuclear war, new research published today in Science Advances presents evidence showing that a nuclear exchange between two minor powers, specifically India and Pakistan, would inflict both a regional and global catastrophe.
The new research, which involved researchers from the University of Colorado, Boulder, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, among other institutions, offered some alarming estimates, showing that a war between the two nations would cause between 50 million and 125 million deaths in the hours and days following a nuclear exchange.
Popular ScienceWhen plants cry out for help, their neighbors start screaming, too
Animals might warn their compatriots of a threat by roaring, trumpeting, whinnying, barking, growling, or letting loose any of a hundred other noises. Goldenrod plants in peril just get smellier.
A new study from researchers at Cornell University shows that, when attacked by the herbivorous goldenrod leaf beetle, Solidago altissima sends out a chemical "cry" detectable by all nearby plants of the same species. It spreads throughout the group until they're all working to defend the collective from invaders.
We've known for a while that plants can "talk" using smelly volatile organic compounds, also known as VOCs, says study author André Kessler. But this paper shows that—for goldenrod, at least—the conversation is beneficial to both the speaker and the receiver, even if they're genetically distinct.
The longest Great Barrier Reef study chronicles a century of devastation
Almost 100 years ago, a group of scientists in the United Kingdom studied coral reefs in the Low Isles off the coast of Port Douglas, Australia. Equipped with a bulky metal diving helmet that more resembled a bucket, they spent hours underwater, creating detailed sketches—while submerged—with a wooden pencil on roughened glass so large, they could draw to scale. Most of these were illustrated by a single woman diver on the team. These sketches depicted complex and diverse communities with a variety of corals—massive ones characterized by their boulder-like shape, branching tree-like corals with outreached arms, and soft species that unfurl in the water like grass.
Known as the Great Barrier Reef Expedition of 1928, its crew spent a year exploring and documenting the Low Isles. Their precise recordings of each community's location allowed modern day marine biologists to retrace the expedition's steps. They visited the original seven locations in 2004, 2015, and once more in 2019 to measure the number of species, the cover and size of coral colonies, and temperature amongst other metrics. These were the same factors observed in 1928 and again in 1954 when one of the original voyage's members revisited the reef. Their work, published last week in Nature Communications, is now the longest ecological survey of coral reefs to date.
The study, which was a combined effort by researchers at Bar-Ilan University, Inter university Institute for Marine Science in Israel, and the University of Queensland in Australia, found that the same reef communities have undergone a massive decline in the abundance and types of corals due to global and local environmental stressors. Its results confirm what other recent studies have found: that coral reefs are under intense stress, and there’s little hope they can ever return to their original state.
The secret to curbing meat consumption? The answer is shockingly simple.
[…] Scientists from the University of Cambridge’s departments of Zoology, Geography, and Public Health joined together to collect data from over 94,000 meal purchases across three of its college cafeterias. Doubling the vegetarian options—from one in four to two in four—increased the sales of vegetarian meals by up to 79 percent.
The study focuses on understanding and manipulating consumers' choice architecture, which is the physical, economic, and social context in which people make decisions. For a worldwide population of 10 billion, some recent studies suggest that a healthy and sustainable meat consumption should be closer to 44 pounds per person annually However, the average annual meat consumption in the US, including food waste, is about 331 pounds per person. That's over seven times higher than where we need to be if we want a healthy planet. To achieve this goal, we need to find low effort, non-controversial solutions.
“Replacing some meat or fish with more vegetarian options might seem obvious, but as far as we know, no one has tested it before,” said lead author of the study Emma Garnett, a PhD candidate in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology. “Solutions that seem obvious don’t always work, but it appears this one does.”
Phys.orgResearch shows the 'magic range' of twisted bilayer graphene is larger than previously expected
In materials science and quantum physics, flat bands and correlated behaviors within the "magic angle" twisted bilayer graphene (tBLG) has sparked significant interest, although many of its properties face intense debate. In a new report published in Science Advances, Emilio Codecido and colleagues in the departments of physics and materials science in the U.S. and Japan observed both superconductivity and a Mott-like insulator state in a tBLG device with a twist angle approximating 0.93 degrees. This angle was 15 percent smaller than the magic angle computed (∼ 1.1°) in previous studies. The study revealed the "magic" range of tBLG to be larger than previously expected. The work provided a wealth of new information to decipher the strong quantum phenomena within tBLG devices for applications in quantum physics.
Physicists define 'Twistronics' as the relative twist angle between adjacent van der Waals layers to produce a moiré superlattice and flat bands in graphene. The concept has emerged as a new and uniquely suitable approach to markedly alter and tailor two-dimensional materials-based device properties to enable the flow of electricity. The marked effect of Twistronics is exemplified in groundbreaking recent work by researchers who demonstrated the emergence of extremely flat bands when two monolayer graphene layers were stacked at a magic twist angle of θ = 1.1 ± 0.1°.
Were hot, humid summers the key to life's origins?
Uncovering how the first biological molecules (like proteins and DNA) arose is a major goal for researchers attempting to solve the origin of life. Today, chemists at Saint Louis University, in collaboration with scientists at the College of Charleston and the NSF/NASA Center for Chemical Evolution, published a study in the journal Nature Communications that suggests deliquescent minerals—which dissolve in water they absorb from humid air—can assist the construction of proteins from simpler building blocks during cycles timed to mimic day and night on the early Earth.
"In terms of the history of the planet, how life originated is probably the greatest scientific question we can ask," said Paul Bracher, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry at Saint Louis University and principal investigator of the study. "A key piece of this grand challenge is figuring out how big polymer molecules we know to be important for life could have formed before all of our biological machinery evolved to make them."
LiveScienceAncient Egyptian Temple from Reign of King Ptolemy IV Unearthed Along Nile River
Construction workers digging for sewer lines in the Egpytian city of Tama instead unearthed something incredible: an elaborately carved, 2,200-year-old temple from the era of King Ptolemy IV.
According to the country's Ministry of Antiquities, construction was stopped and archaeologists were called in to explore the find. So far, the team has discovered an east-west wall, a north-south wall and the southwestern corner of the temple, which is decorated with carvings of the Egpytian god Hapi, the god of fertility and of annual Nile River flooding, which enabled agriculture to flourish in the region in ancient Egypt.
These carvings show Hapi carrying offerings while surrounded by birds and other animals. Fragments of text mention Ptolemy IV, the fourth pharaoh of Egypt's Ptolemaic dynasty.
The Andromeda Galaxy Has Been Devouring Other Galaxies Since It Was a Baby (And Earth Is Next)
Like most big galaxies, the Milky Way is a cold-blooded cannibal, with a history of gobbling up smaller galaxies in order to maintain its lovely spiral figure. But, a few billion years from now, our cosmic home could meet its match with an equally hungry neighbor called Andromeda.
Andromeda, the nearest large galaxy to ours, is on a crash course to merge with the Milky Way about 4.5 billion years from now. How will the monstrous smash-up change the shapes of the participating galaxies? That's anyone's guess. But, given Andromeda's size, astronomers know our neighbor is no slouch when it comes to playing galactic tug-of-war — and, according to new research published today (Oct. 2) in the journal Nature, Andromeda may have a far more cannibalistic past than scientists gave it credit for.
Sci-NewsNew Cretaceous Pterosaur Discovered in Australia
Pterosaurs were highly successful reptiles — not dinosaurs, as they’re commonly mislabeled. These creatures thrived from about 220 million years ago to 65 million years ago, when they were wiped out by the asteroid that also doomed the nonavian dinosaurs.
Some pterosaurs were the largest flying animals of all time, with wingspans exceeding 30 feet (9 m) and standing heights comparable to modern giraffes.
Ferrodraco lentoni (Lenton’s iron dragon, after the late Mayor of Winton, Graham Lenton) had a wingspan of around 13 feet (4 m). The flying reptile lived approximately 96 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period.
Listen to Sounds of Marsquakes, Strange ‘Dinks and Donks’ on Mars
Put on headphones to listen to the sounds of two marsquakes detected by the SEIS instrument. These events occurred on May 22, 2019 (the 173rd Martian day, or sol, of the mission) and July 25, 2019 (Sol 235).
Far below the human range of hearing, these sonifications had to be speeded up and slightly processed to be audible through headphones.
“The Sol 173 quake was about a magnitude 3.7, the Sol 235 quake was about a magnitude 3.3,” the InSight researchers said.
“Both events suggest that the Martian crust is like a mix of the Earth’s crust and the Moon’s.”
Science DailyTargeting certain rogue T cells prevents and reverses multiple sclerosis in mice
Multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disorder, is known to be driven by "helper" T cells, white blood cells that mount an inflammatory attack on the brain and spinal cord. A new study from Boston Children's Hospital pinpoints the specific subgroup of helper T cells that cause MS, as well as a protein on their surface, called CXCR6, that marks them. An antibody targeting CXCR6 both prevented and reversed MS in a mouse model, the researchers report this week in PNAS.
If the findings bear out in human studies, targeting these rogue T cells could ameliorate MS, the researchers believe. The findings could also apply to other forms of autoimmune encephalomyelitis (inflammation of the brain and spinal cord), as well as inflammatory arthritis, says Eileen Remold-O'Donnell, PhD, of the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital, senior author on the paper.
Massive filaments fuel the growth of galaxies and supermassive black holes
An international group of scientists led by the RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research have used observations from the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) at the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and the Suprime-Cam at the Subaru telescope to make detailed observations of the filaments of gas connecting galaxies in a large, distant proto-cluster in the early Universe. Based on direct observations they found that, in accordance with the predictions of the cold dark matter model of galaxy formation, the filaments are extensive, extending over more than 1 million parsecs -- a parsec being just over three light years -- and are providing the fuel for intense formation of stars and the growth of super massive black holes within the proto-cluster.
The observations, which constitute a very detailed map of the filaments, were made on SSA22, a massive proto-cluster of galaxies located about 12 billion light years away in the constellation of Aquarius, making it a structure of the very early universe.
The findings, published in Science, give new insights into galaxy formation.
The GuardianAncient scrolls charred by Vesuvius could be read once again
When Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79 it destroyed the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, their inhabitants and their prized possessions – among them a fine library of scrolls that were carbonised by the searing heat of ash and gas.
But scientists say there may still be hope that the fragile documents can once more be read thanks to an innovative approach involving high-energy x-rays and artificial intelligence.
“Although you can see on every flake of papyrus that there is writing, to open it up would require that papyrus to be really limber and flexible – and it is not any more,” said Prof Brent Seales, chair of computer science at the University of Kentucky, who is leading the research.
Deadly fungus native to Japan and Korea discovered in Australian rainforest
One of the world’s deadliest species of fungus, previously thought native to Japan and Korea, has been found by a photographer on the outskirts of Cairns in northern Australia.
Scientists say the discovery of poison fire coral in a pocket of rainforest in Redlynch, a Cairns suburb, indicates the fungus likely occurs naturally in other parts of Australia and south-east Asia.
Poison fire coral, typically found on tree roots and in the soil, is the only known fungus whose toxins are absorbed through the skin. There are documented fatalities caused by the species in Japan and Korea.
Booming demand could drive tuna to extinction, researchers find
Scientists have warned that existing levels of tuna fishing are unsustainable after researchers found that global catches have increased more than 1,000% over the past 60 years.
A study in the journal Fisheries Research estimated that about 6m tonnes of tuna are now caught annually, a rate that “risks driving tuna populations to unsustainable levels and possible extinction”.
“Tuna fisheries have expanded into every region that we can possibly exploit. There are no new fishing grounds to explore and we are catching fish at the highest rate we can,” said Angie Coulter, a researcher with the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of British Columbia.
NatureThe Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: 40 years of parody and predictions
It begins simply. “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”
Astonishingly, it is 40 years since Douglas Adams published The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. We’ve since replaced digital watches with smartphones and virtual assistants, and we rarely describe them as “neat”. Yet the themes of the book have hardly dated. As ecosystems are destroyed to make way for roads, artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to get seriously unruly and the Universe continually reveals it’s a lot more complicated than we thought, Adams’s creation and its deadpan surreality never seem to fade.
Malaria mosquitoes go with the flow
During the long dry season in the semi-desert region of Africa known as the Sahel, malaria transmission ceases because the mosquitoes that can transmit the disease (termed malaria mosquitoes or vectors) disappear, along with the surface water required for the development of the next generation of mosquitoes. Yet with the first rains that end the dry season, adult numbers surge more quickly than can be explained by resumed breeding in newly rain-filled sites. Evidence to explain this adult population boom has remained elusive for decades. Writing in Nature, Huestis et al. report high-altitude sampling of malaria vectors in the Sahel, which revealed data consistent with long-range wind-borne migration of mosquitoes.
Insect flight typically occurs close to the ground, in a habitat patch that provides all of the insect’s essential resources such as food, shelter, mates and breeding sites. Among malaria vectors, this type of foraging flight rarely exceeds a distance of five kilometres. By contrast, during long-distance migration, insects ascend to altitudes as high as 2–3 km, where fast air currents transport them downwind for hundreds of kilometres in a few hours. This behaviour is beneficial for insects moving in seasonally favourable directions.
Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases
If Thomas Carell is right, around 4 billion years ago, much of Earth might have been blanketed with a greyish-brown kind of mineral. This was no ordinary rock, however: it consisted of crystals of the organic molecules that scientists now call A, U, C and G. And some of these, the theory goes, would later serve as the building blocks of RNA, the evolutionary engine of the first living organisms, before DNA existed.
Carell, an organic chemist, and his collaborators have now demonstrated a chemical pathway that — in principle — could have made A, U, C and G (adenine, uracil, cytosine and guanine, respectively) from basic ingredients such as water and nitrogen under conditions that would have been plausible on the early Earth. The reactions produce so much of these nucleobases that, millennium after millennium, they could have accumulated in thick crusts, Carell says. His team describes the results in Science on 3 October.
The Washington PostUSDA relocation has delayed key studies and millions in funding, employees say
The relocation of two Agriculture Department agencies out of the District of Columbia has delayed the publication of dozens of research reports, squelched early-stage studies and halted the release of millions of dollars in funding, USDA employees say.
At the direction of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, two scientific agencies — the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the Economic Research Service — moved to Kansas City this summer. Employees at NIFA manage a $1.7 billion portfolio of science funding. ERS is a federal statistical agency whose experts study agricultural trade, farming and rural America.
Staff numbers at both agencies have plummeted by about 75 percent since the relocation. At NIFA, the employees who approve the grant paperwork and release funds are gone. The publishing staff at ERS did not accept the reassignment to Kansas City. The flow of research and grants from these agencies has slowed, employees said, piled up behind the logjam of empty desks.
MongabayExpedition finds new humpback breeding ground and sends first deep divers to Amazon Reef
A scientific expedition launched by environmental NGO Greenpeace has discovered a new humpback breeding ground off the coast of French Guiana and sent the first-ever deep divers down to the Amazon Reef.
A number of marine species, from whales and dolphins to sea turtles and sharks, are known to migrate through the waters off the coast of French Guiana, the same biodiversity-rich waters that harbor the Amazon Reef, which was discovered in 2016. Scientists with the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) onboard the Greenpeace ship MY Esperanza observed several different species of marine megafauna during the expedition, including Bryde’s Rorquals, false and pygmy killer whales, silky sharks, Melon Head dolphins, and spotted dolphins.
The scientists also discovered and documented humpbacks as well as tropical whale species feeding and breeding in the area, which they say is a first.
Ars TechnicaPlate tectonics runs deeper than we thought
[…] Plate Tectonics emerged in the late1960s when geologists realized that plates moving on Earth’s surface at fingernail-growth speeds side-swipe each other at some places (like California) and converge at others (like Japan). When they converge, one plate plunges down into Earth’s mantle under the other plate, but what happened to it deeper in the mantle remained a mystery for most of the 20th century. Like an ancient map labeled “here be dragons,” knowledge of the mantle remained skin-deep except for its major boundaries.
Now a marriage of improved computing power and new techniques to investigate Earth’s interior has enabled scientists to address some startling gaps in the original theory, like why there are earthquakes and other tectonic phenomena on continents thousands of miles from plate boundaries:
“Plate tectonics as a theory says zero about the continents; [it] says that the plates are rigid and are moving with respect to each other and that the deformation happens only at the boundaries,” Becker told Ars. ”That is nowhere exactly true! It’s [only] approximately true in the oceanic plates.”
Ancient sippy cup may hold clues about agriculture’s spread in Europe
A recent study found that prehistoric babies drank milk from ceramic sippy cups, including some with cute animal motifs. Lest you be overwhelmed by the cuteness, there's a heartbreaking side to that discovery: Bronze and Iron Age parents buried their dead infants with their clay sippy cups.
A team of archaeologists found microscopic traces of livestock milk in three of the containers: two from Iron Age graves in Germany dating between 800 and 450 BCE, and a broken one from a much earlier Bronze Age grave nearby. The results suggest that feeding babies milk from livestock may have helped early European farming populations grow and expand.