Free Republic

From almost the moment the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the medical-research establishment in Washington and London insisted that the virus had emerged naturally. Only conspiracy theorists, they said, would give credence to the idea that the virus had escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Now, a string of unearthed e-mails — the most recent being a batch viewed by the House Oversight and Reform Committee and referred to in its Jan. 11 letter — is making it seem increasingly likely that there was, in fact, a conspiracy, its aim being to suppress the...

New research suggests giving extra cash to low-income mothers can change their infants’ brain development. Brain measurements at age 1 showed faster activity in key brain regions in infants whose low-income families received $300-plus monthly for a year, compared with those who got $20 each month, U.S. researchers reported Monday. The same type of brain activity has been linked in older children to learning skills and other development, although it’s unclear whether the differences found will persist or influence the infants’ future. The researchers are investigating whether the payments led to better nutrition, less parent stress or other benefits to...

Explanation: Seen from ice moon Tethys, rings and shadows would display fantastic views of the Saturnian system. Haven't dropped in on Tethys lately? Then this gorgeous ringscape from the Cassini spacecraft will have to do for now. Caught in sunlight just below and left of picture center in 2005, Tethys itself is about 1,000 kilometers in diameter and orbits not quite five saturn-radii from the center of the gas giant planet. At that distance (around 300,000 kilometers) it is well outside Saturn's main bright rings, but Tethys is still one of five major moons that find themselves within the boundaries...

Integrity. Dignity. Community.Three simple words that ring like bells.In March of 1963, a great man came to Washington, stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and changed the world by speaking from his heart about his dream. Simple words that continue to resonate through time.We all stand on the shoulders of giants. The simple truths are what matter most. Honest words, spoken from the heart, can change the world.I am a physician and a scientist, highly trained and experienced in developing vaccines and other medicines, but I have also been a carpenter and a farm hand. In my life,...

In a quest to map out a quantum theory of gravity, researchers have used logical rules to calculate how much Einstein’s theory must change. The result matches string theory perfectly. 4 ========================================================================== Quantum gravity researchers use α to denote the size of the biggest quantum correction to Einstein’s general relativity. Recently, three physicists calculated a number pertaining to the quantum nature of gravity. When they saw the value, “we couldn’t believe it,” said Pedro Vieira, one of the three. Gravity’s quantum-scale details are not something physicists usually know how to quantify, but the trio attacked the problem using an approach...

The Roman Space Telescope is a NASA observatory designed to unravel the secrets of dark energy and dark matter, search for and image exoplanets, and explore many topics in infrared astrophysics. Credit: NASA A team of astrophysicists has created a simulated image that shows how the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could conduct a mega-exposure similar to but far larger than Hubble’s celebrated Ultra Deep Field Image. This Hubble observation transformed our view of the early universe, revealing galaxies that formed just a few hundred million years after the big bang. “Roman has the unique ability to image very large...

The White House argued Thursday that the sense of emergency surrounding the coronavirus pandemic would continue, despite some Democrats downplaying the level of concern over the virus. During the daily briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki reacted to a comments from Colorado Democrat Gov. Jared Polis, who said in December that the “medical emergency” surrounding the virus was “over” because of vaccines.

This immunologist has a 97 percent success rate for convincing COVID-vax-hesitant people to get the shot. She can teach you how to support the wary people in your life.n the spring of 2020, Eva Allen barely left her home. She was living in New Orleans with her young daughter and the pandemic was raging out of control. “I home schooled and had food delivered,” she says. “I was doing everything I could to keep my child safe.” Over the next ten months, more than a dozen of Allen’s friends and family contracted the virus. A cousin ended up on a...

Javier Apfeld approached the question like a worm detective. Except, instead of solving a wiggly creature's murder, the biologist was trying to understand why worms didn't die, despite a deadly toxin's common presence in the environments in which they live. The verdict: The worms know how to detect and dodge the chemical threat. A trick they use, as Apfeld and colleagues describe in a new paper published in PLOS Pathogens, is that they know how to get by with a little help from their food. And, says Apfeld, an assistant professor of biology at Northeastern, understanding the worms' methods could...

Taking aim at a distant asteroid, SpaceX fired a small NASA probe into space early Wednesday, setting up a head-on 15,000 mph impact next September to test the feasibility of nudging a threatening body off course long before it could crash into Earth. The $330 million Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, the first test flight in a NASA planetary defense initiative, "will be historic," said Tom Statler, mission program scientist at NASA Headquarters. "For the first time, humanity will change the motion of a natural celestial body in space." Perched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the DART mission...

The asteroid, known as 7482 (1994 PC1), is set to fly by the planet at 1:51 p.m. PT, traveling at a speed of about 43,754 mph, according to NASA. “Near-Earth #asteroid 1994 PC1 (~1 km wide) is very well known and has been studied for decades by our #PlanetaryDefense experts,” With a diameter of approximately 3,451 feet, the asteroid is more than twice the size of the Empire State Building. And while there’s no threat that the asteroid will hit our planet, NASA still considers it a “potentially hazardous object” due to a combination of size and distance from Earth....

The asteroid's orbit gets quite close to our moon's. (NASA/JPL) ************************************************************************** In a slow-moving universe, asteroids give us a rare chance to see things moving in real time. We have such a chance coming right up on the evening of Tuesday, January 18th, when 1.1-kilometer asteroid (7482) 1994 PC1 passes 1.23 million miles (1.98 million kilometers) from Earth. This is about five times the distance from Earth to the Moon, and just a shade over the distance to the anti-sunward Earth-Sun Lagrange 2 point, soon to be the home of the James Webb Space Telescope. Fortunately, both Earth and said...

Image of asteroid (7482) 1994 PC1 taken during a flyby of Earth in 1997. (Sormano Astronomical Observatory) ===================================================================== A large, rocky asteroid is going to fly by Earth next week. At 1 kilometer (3,280 feet) long, it's roughly two and a half times the height of the Empire State Building, and it's been classed a "Potentially Hazardous Asteroid" due to its size and its regular close visits to our planet. But don't worry, this month's visit is going to have a very safe clearance, with the asteroid zipping by at a distance of 1.93 million kilometers (~1.2 million miles) away...

NASA is 'Psyched' as preparations to explore a wild metallic asteroid nears launch in the Summer of 2022. It will be the first time NASA has explored a world not made primarily of rock or ice, but of metal. NASA's Christmas day launch of the highly anticipated James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) captivated those who have been looking forward to its launch. Along with JWST, however, many also await the launch of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) as it journeys to an asteroid in order to provide data about how to possibly divert the object and prevent an impact...

At 11:30 AM (PST) - 62,500 miles from L2 - 836,000 miles from Earth - Current speed 555 mph - Speed will decline to about 325 mph before it enters L2 orbit in five days - Temperature of "hot" side has been stable since sun shield deployment, 133F and 50F - Cold side shows modest cooling, minus 340F and minus 330F - When operational, the cold side will be minus 388F - Webb actually has heaters to keep temp loss very slow to protect equipment and to avoid ice forming from any Earth moisture - Currently, Webb is retracting pegs...

A visualization of the zero-energy electronic states – also known as a ‘Fermi surface’ – from the kagome material studied by MIT’s Riccardo Comin and colleagues. Credit: Comin Laboratory, MIT ************************************************************************** Work will aid design of other unusual quantum materials with many potential applications. MIT physicists and colleagues have discovered the “secret sauce” behind some of the exotic properties of a new quantum material that has transfixed physicists due to those properties, which include superconductivity. Although theorists had predicted the reason for the unusual properties of the material, known as a kagome metal, this is the first time that the...

Trailing-edge noise is the dominant source of sound from aeronautical and turbine engines like those in airplanes, drones, and wind turbines. Suppressing this noise pollution is a major environmental goal for some urban areas. In Physics of Fluids, researchers from Xi'an Jiaotong University used the characteristics of owl wings to inform airfoil design and significantly reduce the trailing-edge noise. "Nocturnal owls produce about 18 decibels less noise than other birds at similar flight speeds due to their unique wing configuration," said author Xiaomin Liu. "Moreover, when the owl catches prey, the shape of the wings is also constantly changing, so...

This is the warning of NASA-funded experts who investigated how telescopes nearly missed a 328-feet-wide asteroid that came within 43,500 miles of Earth back in 2019. The space rock, dubbed '2019 OK', was the first object of its size to get that close to our planet since 1908 — but it was only spotted 24 hours before its closest approach. The reason, the team determined, is because it was moving towards us in such a way that its motion across the night sky was counteracted by the Earth's spin. Thus — to early warning systems like Pan-STARRS1 at Hawaii's Haleakala...

Quantum batteries could one day revolutionize energy storage through what seems like a paradox – the bigger the battery, the faster it charges. For the first time, a team of scientists has now demonstrated the quantum mechanical principle of superabsorption that underpins quantum batteries in a proof-of-concept device. The quirky world of quantum physics is full of phenomena that seem impossible to us. Molecules, for instance, can be become so entwined that they begin acting collectively, and this can lead to a range of quantum effects. That includes superabsorption, which boosts a molecule’s ability to absorb light. “Superabsorption is a...

The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*, keeps releasing random bursts of radiation on a daily basis and no one can figure out what is causing it. These bursts ranged from tens to hundreds of times brighter than the normal signals sent out by the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy, but they don't appear to follow a discernable pattern. The data from 2006 to 2008 show high levels of gamma-ray activity, followed by a rapid four-year-long drop, after which activity shot back up, starting in 2012. There could be any...