Bayard
Bayard's Journal
Earth once wore a Saturn-like ring, study of ancient craters suggests
The ring could be responsible for a prolonged drop in temperatures millions of years ago.
An artist's impression of Earth and its ancient asteroid ring. (Image credit: Oliver Hull)
Earth may have had a giant ring of space rocks surrounding it, similar to those around Saturn, which could have led to chaotic meteorite strikes on our planet's surface, new research suggests. The hypothesized ring may have formed roughly 466 million years ago and was the remains of a gigantic asteroid tugged apart by Earth's tidal forces after passing our planet's Roche limit.
Casting a shadow across Earth's equator, the ring may have contributed to a global cooling event by blocking sunlight, while bombarding the surface with meteorites. The researchers published their findings Sept. 16 in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. "Over millions of years, material from this ring gradually fell to Earth, creating the spike in meteorite impacts observed in the geological record," study lead author Andy Tomkins, a professor of planetary science at Monash University in Australia, said in a statement. "We also see that layers in sedimentary rocks from this period contain extraordinary amounts of meteorite debris."
The scientists arrived at the startling hypothesis by studying a period in Earth's history known as the Ordovician (485 million to 443 million years ago). The Ordovician was a tumultuous time for our planet — it was one of the coldest periods in the last 500 million years and saw a dramatic uptick in the rate of meteorites striking Earth.
To investigate what could have caused these effects, the scientists mapped the positions of 21 Ordovician asteroid impact craters, which revealed that all the impacts occurred within 30 degrees of Earth's equator. As 70% of Earth's continental crust was located outside this region, the researchers calculated that the probability of this happening by chance was the same as tossing a three-sided die 21 times and getting the same outcome 21 times.
https://www.livescience.com/space/earth-once-wore-a-saturn-like-ring-study-of-ancient-craters-suggests
Funny And Relatable Posts By People Who Just Realized That They're Old Now
Who Is Old Enough To Remember All Of These?
Does Anyone Remember This Movie?
(I loved it!)
If You Can Tell What This Is, You Might Be Old
How Many Of You ‘70s Kids Can Feel This Picture?
Who Else Made Their Own Popsicles? (We did!)
Remember When You Opened A Band Aid By Pulling A String?
Who Remembers Changing A Channel By Turning The Knob?
I Loved These And Used To Read Them At The Dentist's Office. It Was Standard Waiting Room Stuff For Kids
Did Anyone Else Sleep In One Of These? I Think I Would Have To Be Helped Out Of It Today
Could This Movie Be Made Today?
The Older I Get, The More I Identify With These Men
I guess I am old as dirt. I did/had just about all of these.
Bypassing Sanctions: Russia, Trade Routes and Outfoxing the West
Invention is the mother of necessity, and Russia’s response to largely Western-imposed economic and trade sanctions has shown the extent of that inventiveness. While enduring attritive punishment in its Ukraine campaign, the war remains sustainable for the Kremlin. The domestic economy has not collapsed, despite apocalyptic predictions to the contrary. In terms of exports, Russia is carving out new trade routes, a move that has been welcomed by notable powers in the Global South.
One of the chief prosecutors of sanctions against Moscow was initially confident about the damage that would be caused by economic bludgeoning. US President Joe Biden, in February 2022, insisted on the imposition of measures that would “impair [Russia’s] ability to compete in a high-tech 21st century economy.” The Council of the European Union also explained that the move was intended to weaken Moscow’s “ability to finance the war and specifically target the political, military and economic elite responsible for the invasion [of Ukraine].”
In all this, the European Union, the United States and other governments have ignored a salient historical lesson when resorting to supposedly punitive formulae intended to either deter Russia from pursuing a course of action or depriving it of necessary resources. States subject to supposedly crushing economic measures can adapt, showing streaks of impressive resilience. The response from Japan, Germany and Italy during the 1930s in the face of sanctions imposed by the League of Nations provide irrefutable proof of that proposition. All, to a certain extent, pursued what came to be known as Blockadefestigkeit, or blockade resilience. With bitter irony, the targeted powers also felt emboldened to pursue even more aggressive measures to subvert the restraints placed upon them.
By the end of 2022, Russia had become China’s second biggest supplier of Russian crude oil. India has also been particularly hungry for Russian oil. Producing only 10% of domestic supply, Russia contributed 34% of the rest of Indian oil consumption in 2023. Trade routes are also being pursued with greater vigour than ever. This year, progress was made between Russia and China on a North Sea Route, which straddles the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, running from Murmansk on the Barents Sea to the Bering Strait and the Far East. The agreement between Russia’s state nuclear agency Rosatom and China’s Hainan Yangpu Newnew Shipping Co Ltd envisages the joint design and creation of Arctic-class container vessels to cope with the punishing conditions throughout the year. Rosatom’s special representative for Arctic development, Vladimir Panov, confidently declared that up to 3 million tonnes of transit cargo would flow along the NSR in 2024.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/09/12/bypassing-sanctions-russia-trade-routes-and-outfoxing-the-west/
Mouse Study Suggests Surprising Link Between Nose-Picking And Alzheimer's
(Denis Bezobrazov/EyeEm/Getty Images)
A recent study has revealed a tenuous but plausible link between picking your nose and increasing the risk of developing dementia. In cases where picking at your nose damages internal tissues, critical species of bacteria have a clearer path to the brain, which responds to their presence in ways that resemble signs of Alzheimer's disease. There are plenty of caveats here, not least that so far the supporting research is based on mice rather than humans, but the findings are definitely worth further investigation – and could improve our understanding of how Alzheimer's gets started, which remains something of a mystery.
A team of researchers led by scientists from Griffith University in Australia ran tests with a bacteria called Chlamydia pneumoniae, which can infect humans and cause pneumonia. The bacteria has also been discovered in the majority of human brains affected by late-onset dementia. It was demonstrated that in mice, the bacteria could travel up the olfactory nerve (joining the nasal cavity and the brain). What's more, when there was damage to the nasal epithelium (the thin tissue along the roof of the nasal cavity), nerve infections got worse. This led to the mouse brains depositing more of the amyloid-beta protein – a protein which is released in response to infections. Plaques (or clumps) of this protein are also found in significant concentrations in people with Alzheimer's disease.
"We're the first to show that Chlamydia pneumoniae can go directly up the nose and into the brain where it can set off pathologies that look like Alzheimer's disease," said neuroscientist James St John from Griffith University in Australia back in October 2022, when the study was released. "We saw this happen in a mouse model, and the evidence is potentially scary for humans as well." The scientists were surprised by the speed at which C. pneumoniae took hold in the central nervous system of the mice, with infection happening within 24 to 72 hours. It's thought that bacteria and viruses see the nose as a quick route to the brain.
While it's not certain that the effects will be the same in humans, or even that amyloid-beta plaques are a cause of Alzheimer's, it's nevertheless important to follow up promising leads in the fight to understand this common neurodegenerative condition. "We need to do this study in humans and confirm whether the same pathway operates in the same way," said St John. "It's research that has been proposed by many people, but not yet completed. What we do know is that these same bacteria are present in humans, but we haven't worked out how they get there." Nose picking isn't exactly a rare thing. In fact, it's possible as many as 9 out of 10 people do it… not to mention a bunch of other species (some a little more adept than others). While the benefits aren't clear, studies like this one should give us pause before picking.
https://www.sciencealert.com/mouse-study-suggests-surprising-link-between-nose-picking-and-alzheimers
Scientists 'rejuvenate' the aged eggs of mice -- is it possible in people?
In an experiment, scientists showed that they can seemingly reverse aspects of aging in mouse egg cells, which are similar in structure to the human cells above. (Image credit: Ed Reschke via Getty Images)
Aging egg cells can be rejuvenated when placed inside young follicles, a new study of mouse cells suggests. The study could serve as proof-of-concept for future fertility treatments aimed at reversing aging in human egg cells — but much more research is needed to translate these findings to people. As immature egg cells, called oocytes get older, they begin having problems with cell division. This can result in aneuploidy, in which the chromosomes in the early oocyte don't separate correctly, resulting in extra or missing chromosomes. This causes higher rates of miscarriage.
People can now freeze their oocytes to help preserve their ability to have children. However, there is currently no method of reversing the effects of aging on older oocytes. In a paper published Monday (Sept. 7) in the journal Nature Aging, scientists at the National University of Singapore demonstrated a new way to model the maturing oocyte in the lab. Through that work, they found that oocytes from older mice that were grown with young mouse cells became rejuvenated, and this improved the rates of live births when the eggs were implanted back into mice.
Senior study author Rong Li, director of the Mechanobiology Institute at the University of Singapore, and her team have been interested in cellular aging for a long time. They started studying the oocyte when they realized that the ovary is the fastest aging organ in the body. "So when someone is only 40 years of age, everything else is very young and healthy, but the ovary is very old, [limiting] reproductive ability," Li told Live Science. This also makes ovaries a great model for the study of aging, in general.
As an oocyte matures, it undergoes multiple rounds of cell division before it's eventually released from the ovary during ovulation. This complex and energetic process is made possible by a follicle that surrounds the maturing oocyte and provides the energy and nutrients needed through thin filaments called tranzonal projections, or TZPs. Without these lifelines to the follicle, an oocyte cannot mature properly.
https://www.livescience.com/health/fertility-pregnancy-birth/scientists-rejuvenate-the-aged-eggs-of-mice-is-it-possible-in-people
How to watch the 'Harvest Supermoon' get eclipsed by Earth next week
September's full Harvest Moon will drift into Earth's shadow for a partial eclipse on Sept. 17. It is also the second of four consecutive supermoons this year, making our natural satellite look bigger and brighter than usual.
The moon will be partially eclipsed by Earth on Sept. 17, 2024 (Image credit: Matt Blyth via Getty Images)
On Tuesday, Sept. 17, the full Harvest Moon will rise and be partially eclipsed by Earth. Observers in North America, South America, Europe and Africa will get the best views of the lunar eclipse, with Saturn shining brightly close to the moon throughout the event. The final full moon of the summer this year, September's full moon is called the Harvest Moon in the Northern Hemisphere because it rises close to sunset for a few evenings in a row, historically giving farmers extra moonlight to help them bring in the harvest, according to Almanac.com.
It's also a supermoon, meaning our natural satellite will appear slightly bigger and brighter than usual. That's because the moon's monthly orbit around Earth is slightly elliptical. When the moon reaches its closest point to Earth each month, known as perigee, during a full moon, it looks larger in Earth's sky. September's supermoon will be the second of four successive supermoons in 2024, following last month's blue supermoon.
Although the full moon will be a spectacular sight at moonrise where you are, the lunar eclipse doesn't begin until later. The moon will be officially full at 10:34 p.m. EDT, shortly before the partial eclipse peaks. During the eclipse, first the moon will drift into Earth's penumbra — its fuzzy outer shadow in space — losing its brightness over about 90 minutes. This penumbral eclipse phase will happen between 8:41 p.m. and 10:13 p.m. EDT.
The moon will then graze Earth's darker inner shadow, the umbra. Although only 8.4% of the lunar surface will recede into the umbra, according to NASA, this is the dramatic partial eclipse phase. You can watch it between 10:13 p.m. and 11:15 p.m. EDT, with the peak eclipse moment being 10:44 p.m. EDT. At that point, the eclipse phases will go into reverse as the moon begins to leave Earth's shadow, with the final penumbral phase taking place between 11:15 p.m. and 12:47 a.m. EDT. You can see a full schedule for your location via timeanddate.com.
https://www.livescience.com/space/the-moon/how-to-watch-the-harvest-supermoon-get-eclipsed-by-earth-next-week
Rare Photos That Reveal The Unseen Side Of Things
When It’s Cold Enough To See The Melody
Spotted A Rainbow Cloud From My Balcony. Not As Beautiful As Aurora But Pretty Rare To See Such Phenomena In India
Not A Painting - Just An Iceberg Flipped Upside Down
Finally Got My Prosthetics In
Ice Eggs - This Rare Phenomenon Occurs When Ice Is Rolled Over By Wind And Water (Northern Finland)
The Forests Of Aspen, Colorado
Highway To Heaven. 30-Second Long Exposure Of Airliner Departing From Runway
My Nails Pushing The Chemo Out Of My Fingertips
This Butterfly With Transparent Wings
This Close Up Shot Of A Dragonfly I Took With My Phone The Other Day
Just When You Thought You’d Seen Everything - Here’s Snowball, An Extremely Rare Leucistic Alligator
Horses On A Plane
Certain Fish Skin Can Be Grafted Onto Burns And Diabetic Wounds. The Material Recruits The Body's Own Cells And Is Converted
Eventually Into Living Tissue
The Density Of Penguin Feathers
Sendai Daikannon, One Of The Tallest Statues In The World
This Majestic Emerald Mallard
We Got These Giant Screws In At Work Today For Mounting Solar Panels
The UK Is Full Of Charming Crinkle Crankle Garden Walls
The Back Of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa
Giant Puffball Mushroom My Sister Found In The Woods
Ants Gutted My Almond To Make Their Own Almond Flour
When My Cat Got Spayed, The Shaved Area Grew Back Chocolate Coloured
A Hand Of A Koala
$12,000 Worth Of Cancer Pills
More at:
https://www.boredpanda.com/fascinating-rarely-seen-things/
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayHome country: U.S.
Member since: Tue Dec 29, 2015, 03:16 PM
Number of posts: 23,802