Researchers find evidence for cave accessible from surface – which could shelter humans from harsh lunar environment

Researchers have found evidence for a substantial underground cave on the moon that is accessible from the surface, making the spot a prime location to build a future lunar base.

The cave appears to be reachable from an open pit in the Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility), the ancient lava plain where the Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first set foot on the moon more than half a century ago.

Analysis of radar data collected by Nasa’s lunar reconnaissance orbiter (LRO) revealed that the Mare Tranquillitatis pit, the deepest known pit on the moon, leads to a cave 45 metres wide and up to 80 metres long, an area equivalent to 14 tennis courts. The cave lies about 150 metres beneath the surface.

One hundred years ago the discovery of a skull in South Africa’s North West province altered our understanding of human evolution. The juvenile skull was dubbed the Taung Child by Raymond Dart, an anatomist at the University of the Witwatersrand, who first described it. In 1924 Dart could not say exactly how old it was, but he announced that it belonged to a new species which he named Australopithecus africanus. It was the first evidence that confirmed British naturalist Charles Darwin’s assertion that apes and humans shared a long-ago common ancestor and that humanity originated from Africa.

Following on from the Taung Child, new discoveries of Australopithecus africanus were made, many at Sterkfontein, about 70km south-west of Pretoria. Sterkfontein is located within the “Cradle of Humankind”, which is a Unesco World Heritage Site.

In the century since the Taung Child was found and described, a great debate has developed about the geological ages of the Australopithecus fossils found at Sterkfontein as well as those from Taung and a third site, Makapansgat.

Micromotors found within microorganisms possess a multitude of unique and advantageous properties, outperforming engineered motors developed thus far. 

Microorganisms possess remarkable locomotion abilities, making them potential candidates for micromachine propulsion.  Here, the use of Chlamydomonas Reinhardtii (CR) is explored, a motile green alga, as a micromotor by harnessing its propulsive force with microtraps.

The micromachine empowered with two CRs facing the same direction exhibits complex, random-like motion with yaw, pitch, and roll movements, while the micromachine with four CRs in a circular position each facing the tangential direction of the circle demonstrates controlled rotational motion. These findings highlight the degree of freedom and movement potential of biohybrid micromachines.

Taken together, the structures we have designed to efficiently trap CRs illustrate the potential of harnessing their propulsion force for the effective conversion into mechanical energy for micromachines. This strategy unveils new pathways in fundamental sciences by exploring the dynamics of CRs’ motion, as well as in the research area focusing on micromachines in the liquids that transform motion into work via the activities.

The latest dinosaur being mounted at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles is not only a member of a new species—it's also the only one found on the planet whose bones are green, according to museum officials.

Named "Gnatalie" (pronounced Natalie) for the gnats that swarmed during the excavation, the long-necked, long-tailed herbivorous dinosaur's fossils got its unique coloration, a dark mottled olive green, from the mineral celadonite during the fossilization process.

While fossils are typically brown from silica or black from iron minerals, green is rare because celadonite forms in volcanic or hydrothermal conditions that typically destroy buried bones. The celadonite entered the fossils when volcanic activity around 50 million to 80 million years ago made it hot enough to replace a previous mineral.

The dinosaur lived 150 million years ago in the late Jurassic Era, making it older than Tyrannosaurus rex—which lived 66 million to 68 million years ago.

Highlights

•3D genome architecture is preserved in a 52,000-year-old woolly mammoth sample

•PaleoHi-C makes it possible to assemble the woolly mammoth’s genome

•Chromatin compartments also persist, enabling study of mammoth gene expression

•We propose that dehydration led to a glass transition arresting molecular movement

We hypothesize that, shortly after this mammoth’s death, the sample spontaneously freeze-dried in the Siberian cold, leading to a glass transition that preserved subfossils of ancient chromosomes at nanometer scale.

A planet relatively close to Earth could be the first ever detected with a potentially life-sustaining liquid ocean outside our Solar System, according to scientists using the James Webb space telescope.

More than 5,000 planets have been discovered outside of the Solar System so far, but only a handful are in what is called the "Goldilocks zone" — neither too hot or too cold — that could host liquid water, a key ingredient for life.

The exoplanet LHS 1140 b is one of the few in this habitable zone, and has been thoroughly scrutinized since it was first discovered in 2017.

It sits 48 light years from Earth, which equates to more than 450 trillion kilometers (280 trillion miles) — relatively close in the vast distances of space.

The exoplanet had been thought to be a small gas giant called a "mini-Neptune" with an atmosphere too thick with hydrogen and helium to support alien life.

However, new observations from the Webb telescope have confirmed that the exoplanet is in fact a rocky "super-Earth".

It is 1.7 times bigger than Earth, but has 5.6 times its mass.

The current waste management system within the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) consists of a disposable diaper—the Maximum Absorbency Garment (MAG)—that collects urine and feces during extravehicular activities (EVAs) that last up to 8 h.

Such exposure to waste for prolonged periods of time contributes to hygiene-related medical events, including urinary tract infections and gastrointestinal distress.

Historically, prior to using the MAG, astronauts have limited their food intake or eaten a low-residue diet before embarking on physically demanding spacewalks, reducing their work performance index (WPI) and posing a health risk.

Furthermore, the current 0.95 L In-suit Drink Bag (IDB) does not provide sufficient water for more frequent, longer-range spacewalks, which carry greater potential for contingency scenarios requiring extended time away from a vehicle. High transport costs per pound to space and resource scarcity exacerbate these challenges, underscoring the need for water-efficient waste management.

This paper introduces a novel in-suit urine collection and filtration system developed in the Mason Lab at Weill Cornell Medical College that could address these hygiene and hydration concerns.

The device would collect astronaut urine via an external catheter and filter it using forward and reverse osmosis (FO-RO) into potable water, creating a sustainable and hygienic circular water economy, enhancing astronaut wellbeing.

This research aims to achieve an 85% urine collection rate using a modified MAG. The modified MAG will be made of a flexible compression material lined with antimicrobial fabric, and urine is collected through a silicone urine collection cup, which differs for male and female astronauts to conform to anatomy. Urine collection via a vacuum pump is triggered by a humidity sensor that detects the presence of urine in the cup.

The FO-RO filtration system targets a minimum of 75% water recovery, while consuming less than 10% of EMU energy.

To meet health standards, the filtrate maintains low salt levels (<250 ppm NaCl) and effectively removes major urine solutes (urea, uric acid, ammonia, calcium).

A single block in this stone staircase to the temple is mysteriously always wet.

GUHŌ-JI IS AN OLD TEMPLE in Ichikawa City, Chiba, originally founded in 737 though the complex has been rebuilt numerous times, most recently in 1972. Its main approach is a steep stone-step path, consisting of over a thousand blocks, one of which bears a curious story.

On the 27th step (counting up), one block stands out, moist and mossy, worn and uneven while all the other steps are crisp-cornered. This particular block is known as Namida-ishi, which means “tear-stone.”

According to the legend, master carpenter Suzuki Nagayori was transporting stone material from Izu to Nikkō, where a grand shrine of the Tokugawa shogun was being built, when his ship got stuck in Ichikawa. Unable to move on, he used the stone for Guhō-ji instead.

When the government found out, Suzuki committed seppuku on the temple steps as a form of apology. It is said that his blood and tears are soaked into the one block, forever cursing it.

Highlights

•A large crocodile mummy was studied using digital radiography and CT scanning

•A radiodense fish hook and a small fish were visible in the stomach

•Following data segmentation, the fish hook was recreated using stereolithography

•Wax replicas of the fish hook were created from the STL file

•Bronze replicas of the fish hook were investment cast using the lost wax method

The application of non-invasive radiography (X-ray and CT) to an ancient Egyptian crocodile mummy demonstrated a high level of corporeal preservation achieved through artificial embalming.

Analysis revealed numerous anomalies within the abdomen of the crocodile which merited further investigation using digital three-dimensional modelling technologies.

Improving the clarity of the CT scan data enabled the authors to identify the anomalies which included a metal fish hook and a small fish.

Segmentation of the CT scan data enabled the virtual extraction of the hook from within the confines of the mummy and its replication, firstly in plastic and then in its original material, bronze.

Highlights

•This study helps resolve one of the longest controversies in paleoanthropology: when did early hominins arrive in Europe?

•Three superposed hominin sites are dated between the Olduvai and Jaramillo magnetic subchrons (1.78–1.07 Myr) for the first time in Europe.

•A Bayesian age-stratigraphic model provides Europe's oldest and most accurate early Pleistocene hominin ages.

•Hominins with Oldowan tools entered Europe for the first time ~ 0.5 Ma after first leaving Africa.

•This migration occurred ~0.5 Ma before the arrival of Acheulian technology in Europe.

•Both African migrations are first reported in Spain, suggesting that the Strait of Gibraltar was a permeable barrier for early Pleistocene hominins

The Orce region presents a unique European stratigraphic, paleontological, and hominin succession with >1 million years of the Early Pleistocene record.

This study places three hominin sites within this record between the Olduvai and Jaramillo subchrons with dates of 1.32, 1.28, and 1.23 Ma.

The Orce region recorded the first arrival of hominins in Europe ~1.3 Ma at the Venta Micena site, indicating that Europe was isolated from an Afro-Asiatic hominin world for >0.5 Ma, likely due to biogeographical barriers.

Once hominins reached Iberia, they further dispersed into southern Europe. The archaeological record shows that a second wave of hominins with Acheulian lithic culture reached Europe (Iberia) after the Jaramillo, around 0.9 Ma.

These chronologies suggest that the Strait of Gibraltar acted as a filter bridge for African species like hominins, Theropithecus, and hippos during the Early Pleistocene.

A conference in the UK this week will outline new developments in a project to look for ‘technosignatures’ of other advanced species

It has produced one of the most consistent sets of negative results in the history of science. For more than 60 years, researchers have tried to find a single convincing piece of evidence to support the idea that we share the universe with other intelligent beings. Despite these decades of effort, they have failed to make contact of any kind.

But the hunt for alien civilisations may be entering a new era, researchers believe. Scientists with Breakthrough Listen, the world’s largest scientific research programme dedicated to finding alien civilisations, say a host of technological developments are about to transform the search for intelligent life in the cosmos.

These innovations will be outlined at the group’s annual conference, which is to be held in the UK for the first time, in Oxford, this week.

A claim of epic proportions met its match in peer review, sending archaeologists back to square one.

A published study claiming the Indonesian pyramid Gunung Padang was crafted by humans 27,000 years ago was retracted by publishers.

The study’s authors fight the retraction, but the archeological community backs it.

Radiocarbon dating has proved the key sticking point.

The fight over the science of an ancient Indonesian landmark has taken another turn in the archeological community—a controversial October 2023 study claiming that Gunung Padang is a pyramid created by humans 27,000 years ago was recently fully retracted from Wiley, the publishers of the journal Archaeological Prospection.

Natawidjaja and his team aren’t budging. They claim the soil samples “have been unequivocally established as man-made constructions” that feature three distinct phases of construction. They claim the shapes, composition, and arrangement of the stone bolsters the argument.

The hypothetical faster-than-light particle known as the tachyon may marry with the special theory of relativity, according to a team of physicists, making their existence more plausible.

Tachyons are a type of hypothetical particle, meaning its existence remains a matter of speculation.

The tachyon is also proposed to be superliminal, meaning it always travels faster than light.

But nothing can move faster than light…right?

The short answer is no, nothing can exceed the speed of light: 983,571,056 feet per second, or 299,792,458 meters per second. The longer answer is that it’s complicated; for example, quasiparticles created by clouds of electrons act as if they travel faster than light, though they do not.

And while we’re musing on hypotheticals: If some other intelligent beings in the universe have figured out how to travel faster than light, evidence of their triumph may be detectable in the gravitational ripples produced by their technology, as proposed by a recent team of physicists.

Like the tachyon itself, the work is very speculative. But such is the domain of these hypothetical particles. Researching stuff that moves faster than light was always going to require some imagination.

For decades researchers have been uncovering the genes living people owe to the extinct Neanderthals—a genetic legacy that boosts our immune systems, helps our blood clot, and may play a role in depression. Now, a study of ancient DNA turns the tables on Neanderthals and asks: What did they get from us?

The Neanderthal-eye view allowed the researchers to date when the two groups mingled, finding they made babies together remarkably early: more than 200,000 years ago, not long after Homo sapiens coalesced as a species. The dalliances were repeated 105,000 to 120,000 years ago, and 45,000 to 60,000 years ago, the ancient Neanderthal DNA suggests. It argues mating was more common than previously thought.

This new picture further blurs the boundaries between Neanderthals and modern humans. And it identifies features of the Neanderthal genome suggesting our big-brained, heavy-browed relatives were pitifully rare, which could help explain why they went extinct. “It’s alarming to see how small the Neanderthal populations were—this is a very powerful result,”

Once seen as a separate species, Neanderthals have enjoyed a complete makeover in the 14 years since researchers first sequenced DNA in their fossils and found they interbred with modern humans. Most living people outside of Africa have inherited about 1% to 2% of their DNA from Neanderthals, perhaps from a prolonged period of mixing 45,000 to 60,000 years ago in Europe or the Middle East.

China is targeting a small non-threatening near-Earth asteroid for a daring attempt to run into it at high speeds and move it off its course. The Chinese asteroid deflection test could happen as early as 2027, in a project similar to NASA’s recent DART mission.

Asteroid 2015 XF261 is around 98 feet wide (30 meters) and had a recent encounter with Earth when it zipped past our planet at a distance of 31 million miles (50 million kilometers) on Tuesday, July 9. The near-Earth asteroid routinely passes by the planet twice a year, with the next flyby on February 21, 2025.

Of the 31,000 near-Earth asteroids that have been discovered, about 2,300 are considered potentially hazardous by NASA. These are asteroids that come within 30 million miles of our planet.

The genetic sequence he unveiled is the oldest high-quality human genome yet—80,000 years older than the previous record holder: a Neanderthal that lived about 120,000 years ago.

The new results come after more than a decade of effort to find fossilized bones and a second genome of a Denisovan, the mysterious archaic human discovered through its DNA 14 years ago.

That first Denisovan genome came from a girl’s pinkie finger bone dated between 60,000 to 80,000 years ago. The genomes of both Denisovans and the ancient Neanderthal all came from the same cold, fossil-rich site: Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia.

Denisovans are primarily known from their DNA. Researchers have the genome of the girl, as well as bits of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA from fragmentary fossils—teeth, a toe bone—of seven additional individuals, all also from Denisova Cave.

Scientists have also identified some Denisovan DNA in living humans, including in Papuans and Han Chinese people, acquired from past interbreeding. 

DNA in sediments showed that Denisovans were first in the cave 300,000 years ago, and later lived in a cave on the Tibetan Plateau.

The scanty fossils reveal this archaic human had larger molars than did the Neanderthals and a robust lower face, known from a jawbone in China. But no one really knows what Denisovans looked like.

"Although the long chain of custody for this specimen cannot be verified, public and media interest in the specimen warranted a transparent investigation that adhered to the scientific method,” the report said. “The specimen’s physiochemical properties are claimed to make the material capable of “inertial mass reduction” (i.e., levitation or antigravity functionality), possibly attributable to the material’s bismuth and magnesium layers acting as a terahertz waveguide.”

"Many experimental [magnesium] alloys failed for reasons not well understood at the time of testing, e.g., stress corrosion cracking,” the AARO said in its press release. “Unsurprisingly, records of failed [magnesium] alloy designs are scant. Neither AARO nor ORNL could verify the specimen’s historical origin. Unverifiable, conflicting personal accounts complicate its undocumented chain of custody.”

Neither the press release nor the Oak Ridge report mention Roswell, New Mexico, but pinpointing the recovery date of the material to 1947 makes it likely that whoever gave the sample to To The Stars has claimed that’s where it came from.

“This specimen has been publicly alleged to be a component recovered from a crashed extraterrestrial vehicle in 1947, and purportedly exhibits extraordinary properties, such as functioning as a terahertz waveguide to generate antigravity capabilities,” the AARO said in the press release. “Considering all available evidence, AARO assesses that this specimen is likely a test object, a manufacturing product or byproduct, or a material component of aerospace performance studies to evaluate the properties of [magnesium] alloys.”

https://gizmodo.com/pentagon-publishes-report-on-material-from-a-reported-alien-aircraft-2000469433?utm_source=press.coop

The problem for scientific models of consciousness remains accommodating these intuitive accounts within a materialist framework consistent with the findings of neuroscience. While there is no current scientific explanation for how brain tissue generates or maintains subjective experience, the consensus among (most) neuroscientists is that it is a product of brain processes.

If that’s the case, why did consciousness, defined as subjective awareness, evolve?

Consciousness presumably evolved as part of the evolution of the nervous system. According to several theories the key adaptive function (providing an organism with survival and reproductive benefits) of consciousness is to make volitional movement possible. And volition is something we ultimately associate with will, agency and individuality. It is therefore easy to think that consciousness evolved to benefit us as individuals.

Photos: Archaeological Mysteries Hikers Are Finding in the Alps

Hikers and mountaineers are stumbling on mysterious ancient objects in the Swiss Alps, and their discoveries are keeping archaeologists busy.

From the Iron Age to the Ancient Romans to the Middle Ages, people traveled across the Alps's icy mountain passes with cows, mules, oil, wine, skis, weapons, and more.

Their lost or abandoned belongings are now surfacing as the mountains' glaciers melt, revealing clues about past civilizations and eras.

Like the statue, many glacier artifacts are organic materials — wood, plant materials, leather — things that don't survive well at lower altitudes where they aren't frozen.

That means artifacts like these are not common in archaeological digs. They don't have analogs in ancient cities or tombs — places that provide the context to figure out an item's purpose.

In the case of this statue we have no comparison.

The first sign that Erez Lieberman Aiden and his team were onto something special was the ice age beast’s hairdo. Woolly mammoth hides that froze, thawed, and refroze tend to go bald. But the mammoth that had perished some 52,000 years ago in Siberia had retained a tangle of chestnut-brown hair over much of its body, suggesting it had stayed frozen since the animal died.

The closer the scientists peered, the more wonders they beheld. A microscope revealed the mammoth’s hair follicles. Looking even closer, they saw loops of chromatin—the DNA and proteins that make up chromosomes—preserved in a glasslike state in which the molecules are packed tightly.

From that exquisite slab of skin, the researchers assembled the mammoth’s genome and the 3D architecture of its chromosomes. The structure closely resembles that of modern elephants and showed the genome in action, revealing clues to which genes were active in mammoth skin.

Knowing the structure of the mammoth genome may put wind in the sails of controversial efforts to resurrect the beast.  The next big forefront in the field will come from novel chemistry to unlock deeper time fossils,” older than 1 million years.

In folklore, the Michigan Dogman was a creature allegedly witnessed in 1887 in Wexford County, Michigan, United States. It was described as a seven-foot tall, blue-eyed, or amber-eyed bipedal canine-like animal with the torso of a man and a fearsome howl that sounds like a human scream. According to legends, the Michigan Dogman appears in a ten-year cycle that falls on years ending in 7.

This creature was unknown to most of the modern world, until very late in the 20th century. It is said to have been stalking the area around the Manistee River since the days when the Odawa tribes lived there.

The first alleged encounter of the Michigan Dogman occurred in 1887 in Wexford County, when two lumberjacks saw a creature which they described as having a man's body and a dog's head.

In 1937 in Paris, Michigan, Robert Fortney was attacked by five wild dogs and said that one of the five walked on two legs.

Reports of similar creatures also came from Allegan County in the 1950s, and in Manistee and Cross Village in 1967

In the period between 5,300 and 4,900 calibrated years before present (cal. BP), populations across large parts of Europe underwent a period of demographic decline

We find that the Neolithic plague was widespread, detected in at least 17% of the sampled population and across large geographical distances.

Taken together, our findings provide a detailed reconstruction of plague spread within a large patrilineal kinship group and identify multiple plague infections in a population dated to the beginning of the Neolithic decline.

Any night now, a “new star” or nova will appear in the night sky. While it won’t set the sky ablaze, it’s a special opportunity to see a rare event that’s usually difficult to predict in advance.

The star in question is T Coronae Borealis (T CrB, pronounced “T Cor Bor”). It lies in the constellation of the northern crown, prominent in the Northern Hemisphere but also visible in the northern sky from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand over the next few months.

Most of the time T CrB, which is 3,000 light years away, is much too faint to be seen. But once every 80 years or so, it brightly erupts.

A brand new star suddenly seems to appear, although not for long. Just a few nights later it will have rapidly faded, disappearing back into the darkness.

Nasa has discovered “surprise” X and C shapes in the Earth’s atmosphere - and scientists are struggling to explain them.

While these alphabetical shapes have been observed before, Nasa’s Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission sees them more clearly than other instruments have and is now finding them where and when scientists didn’t expect.

These unexpected appearances tell scientists that something else must be involved in forming these X shapes. Computer models suggest that the X could develop when changes in the lower atmosphere pull plasma downward.

“The X is odd because it implies that there are far more localized driving factors,” said Jeffrey Klenzing, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who studies the ionosphere.

A team of astronomers has identified a temperate exoplanet as a promising super-Earth ice or water world.

This is the first time we have ever seen a hint of an atmosphere on a habitable zone rocky or ice-rich exoplanet. Detecting atmospheres on small, rocky worlds is a major goal for JWST, but these signals are much harder to see than for giant planet atmospheres.

The planet, located about 48 light-years away in the constellation Cetus, emerges as one of the most promising habitable zone exoplanet candidates known, potentially harboring an atmosphere and even a liquid water ocean.

Transmission Spectroscopy of the Habitable Zone Exoplanet LHS 1140 b with JWST/NIRISS

https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.15136