Free Republic

Astronauts face significant perils while in space. Multiple studies indicate that humans who spend long enough in orbit may experience a range of health maladies that include weight loss, immune system weakening, loss in bone density, vision loss, and even mysterious headaches. However, new research is revealing how an ancient food product used for millennia may help alleviate some of the risks that astronauts face, and it tastes good too. In a joint project between the European Space Agency, the Italian Space Agency, and the Council for Agricultural Research and Analysis of Agricultural Economics, a team of researchers and astronauts...

Nobel prize-winning physicist Peter Higgs, who proposed the existence of the so-called "God particle" that helped explain how matter formed after the Big Bang, has died at age 94, the University of Edinburgh said Tuesday. The university, where Higgs was emeritus professor, said he died Monday following a short illness. Higgs predicted the existence of a new particle, which came to be known as the Higgs boson, in 1964. He theorized that there must be a sub-atomic particle of certain dimension that would explain how other particles—and therefore all the stars and planets in the universe—acquired mass. Without something like...

Explanation: How does a comet tail change? It depends on the comet. The ion tail of Comet 12P/Pons–Brooks has been changing markedly, as detailed in the featured image sequenced over nine days from March 6 to 14 (top to bottom). On some days, the comet's ion tail was relatively long and complex, but not every day. Reasons for tail changes include the rate of ejection of material from the comet's nucleus, the strength and complexity of the passing solar wind, and the rotation rate of the comet. Over the course of a week, apparent changes even include a change of...

… What is the value in the coming spectacle, beyond oohs and aahs? Perhaps it is in the dramatic demonstration that we are all, regardless of our divisive politics and cultural strife today, riding the same floating sphere, one among countless of them, some of which line up in random but beautiful ways from time to time. Democrats and Republicans alike will look up together in fascination on Monday. It will be a bipartisan moment of galactic proportions. The eclipse's path will take it far north of Washington, D.C. That's too bad. If there's any crowd that needs reminding of...

Explanation: What's happening to the big black hole in the center of our galaxy? It is sucking in matter from a swirling disk -- a disk that is magnetized, it has now been confirmed. Specifically, the black hole's accretion disk has recently been seen to emit polarized light, radiation frequently associated with a magnetized source. Pictured here is a close-up of Sgr A*, our Galaxy's central black hole, taken by radio telescopes around the world participating in the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration. Superposed are illustrative curved lines indicating polarized light likely emitted from swirling magnetized gas that will soon...

There are striking analogies between the interpersonal relationships of humans and the gravitational interaction of physical bodies in space. Consider a two-body system. In both realms, the systems can have stable configurations, leading to long-lived marriages or stellar binaries. But when a third body interacts strongly with these systems, a non-hierarchical three-body system often displays chaos with one of the members ejected and the other two remaining bound. This brings up analogies with interpersonal relationships when a third body is added to a non-hierarchical two-body system. The chaotic gravitational dynamics in a system of three stars inspired the storyline for...

The solar eclipse's path of totality could shift on Monday - and now experts are urging people to travel to different spots to see the celestial event.Amateur astronomer John Irwin released a new map of the 115-mile path from Maine through Texas which has revealed its changed by roughly 2,000 feet.The updated calculation has suggested that people in places like Rome, New York, Effingham, Illinois, and some areas of Fort Worth, Texas will no longer be able to have a perfect view of the eclipse. Roughly 34 million people are expected to view the eclipse, but hundreds of thousands of...

Explanation: In dark evening skies over June Lake, northern hemisphere, planet Earth, Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks stood just above the western horizon on March 30. Its twisted turbulent ion tail and diffuse greenish coma are captured in this two degree wide telescopic field of view along with bright yellowish star Hamal also known as Alpha Arietis. Now Pons-Brooks has moved out of the northern night though, approaching perihelion on April 21. On April 8 you might still spot the comet in daytime skies. But to do it, you will have to stand in the path of totality and look away from the...

During a total solar eclipse, the sun's ghostly white corona appears around the black disk of the moon. This total solar eclipse was photographed on Aug. 21, 2017 in Oregon.

It was a terrible quake that struck near Hualien City, Taiwan, just as the workday was beginning on Wednesday. Details aren't yet complete but, so far, nine people have been reported killed, over a thousand more injured, and 152 trapped in damaged buildings, quarries, and other places. At 7.4 on Richter Scale, the Hualien shifter was three times more powerful and released 5.6 times more energy than the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that dropped part of San Francisco's elevated Embarcadaro freeway, killed 63 people, and injured 3,757 more. “It was pretty scary,” a visiting American told NBC News. “In all...

Days before one of the researchers’ wedding, a star explodes in a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.A team of Israeli scientists managed to capture and study a once-in-a-lifetime supernova using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, helping mankind better understand this magnificent event. Supernovas, or exploding stars, are phenomenons that occur in our galaxy about once every century, with the last observable explosion taking place hundreds of years ago. Supernovas can’t be predicted, and instead astrophysicists study their aftermath in a way reminiscent of space archaeology. But the researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science learned about the supernova as it was taking place on...

Scientists say they have created a new method of testing materials that allows predictions to be made about their ductility, which could lead to the production of virtually “unbreakable” metals for use with components in a variety of applications. Drawing from quantum mechanics principles, the new method allows for significant improvements by enhancing predictions about metals’ ability to be drawn out into thinner shapes while maintaining their strength. According to researchers involved with the discovery, the new method has proven very effective for metals used in high-temperature applications and could help industries like aerospace and other fields perform tests of...

The world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator is set smash protons together on April 8 to search for invisible particles secretly powering our universe. Theories have suggested there are 17 different particle groups and the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN, confirmed the existence of one using its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012. Now, the team has restarted the LHC with hopes of unraveling more mysteries of the universe - specifically dark matter. Scientists began preliminary tests by sending billions of protons around the LHC's ring of superconducting magnets to boost their energy and ensure...

Explanation: Discovered by accident, this manuscript page provides graphical insight to astronomy in medieval times, before the Renaissance and the influence of Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho de Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo. The intriguing page is from lecture notes on astronomy compiled by the monk Magister Wolfgang de Styria before the year 1490. The top panels clearly illustrate the necessary geometry for a lunar (left) and solar eclipse in the Earth-centered Ptolemaic system. At lower left is a diagram of the Ptolemaic view of the Solar System with text at the upper right to explain the movement of the planets according...

A new published report from international researchers marshals every line of evidence in defense of fairness in women’s sports.The International Olympic Committee (IOC) developed its 2021 framework on sex and “gender” around the concepts of fairness, inclusion, and non-discrimination. This framework leaves it to each sport’s governing body “to determine how an athlete may be at a disproportionate advantage against their peers.” However, they admonish sports organizations against “targeted testing … aimed at determining [athletes’] sex, gender identity and/or sex variations.” Instead, it’s up to each sport to “[provide] confidence that no athlete within a category has an unfair and...

Explanation: Globular star cluster Omega Centauri, also known as NGC 5139, is 15,000 light-years away. The cluster is packed with about 10 million stars much older than the Sun within a volume about 150 light-years in diameter. It's the largest and brightest of 200 or so known globular clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Though most star clusters consist of stars with the same age and composition, the enigmatic Omega Cen exhibits the presence of different stellar populations with a spread of ages and chemical abundances. In fact, Omega Cen may be the remnant core of...

Stars from the Large Magellanic Cloud reveal new hints about how the universe got its elements ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The first generation of stars transformed the universe. Inside their cores, simple hydrogen and helium fused into a rainbow of elements. When these stars died, they exploded and sent these new elements across the universe. The iron running in your veins and the calcium in your teeth and the sodium powering your thoughts were all born in the heart of a long-dead star. No one has been able to find one of those first generation of stars, but scientists have announced a unique...

How much energy AI really needs. And why that's not its main problem. | 8:05Sabine Hossenfelder | 1.19M subscribers | 171,326 views | March 25, 2024

Engineers at INRS Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre in Canada have developed the world’s fastest camera, which can shoot at an astonishing 156.3 trillion frames per second (fps). The best slow-mo cameras in phones are usually working with a few hundred fps. Professional cinematic cameras might use a few thousand, to achieve a smoother effect. But if you want to see what’s going on at the nanoscale, you’ll need to slow things way down, to the billions or even trillions of frames per second. The new camera can reportedly capture events that occur in the realm of femtoseconds – quadrillionths...

Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth) - Martin Durkin . This film exposes the climate alarm as an invented scare without any basis in science. It shows that mainstream studies and official data do not support the claim that we are witnessing an increase in extreme weather events – hurricanes, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires and all the rest. It emphatically counters the claim that current temperatures and levels of atmospheric CO2 are unusually and worryingly high. On the contrary, it is very clearly the case, as can be seen in all mainstream studies, that, compared to the last half billion years...