Official "Science News" Thread

[kriesel]

Article posted just in time for Halloween:
the species once thought to be a biologist's hoax, when the first specimen was sent to Europe, with a duck bill, webbed feet, and fur, is a mammal that lays eggs, has venomous spurs, senses electrical fields to hunt, and GLOWS IN THE DARK for good measure (under UV lighting, e.g. has fur that fluoresces).
https://gizmodo.com/as-if-the-platyp...der-1845529134

[Xyzzy]

We wonder how creationists explain that!

[Dr Sardonicus]

Cable failures endanger renowned Puerto Rico radio telescope

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Giant, aging cables that support one of the world's largest single-dish radio telescopes are slowly unraveling in this U.S. territory, pushing an observatory renowned for its key role in astronomical discoveries to the brink of collapse.

The Arecibo Observatory, which is tethered above a sinkhole in Puerto Rico's lush mountain region, boasts a 1,000-foot-wide (305-meter-wide) dish featured in the Jodie Foster film "Contact" and the James Bond movie "GoldenEye." The dish and a dome suspended above it have been used to track asteroids headed to Earth, conduct research that led to a Nobel Prize and helped scientists trying to determine if a planet is habitable.
<snip>
Last week, one of the telescope's main steel cables that was capable of sustaining 1,200 pounds (544 kilograms) snapped under only 624 pounds (283 kilograms). That failure further mangled the reflector dish after an auxiliary cable broke in August, tearing a 100-foot hole and damaging the dome above it.

Officials said they were surprised because they had evaluated the structure in August and believed it could handle the shift in weight based on previous inspections.
<snip>
Some new cables are scheduled to arrive next month, but officials said funding for repairs has not been worked out with federal agencies. Scientists warn that time is running out. Only a handful of cables now support the 900-ton platform.

"Each of the structure's remaining cables is now supporting more weight than before, increasing the likelihood of another cable failure, which would likely result in the collapse of the entire structure," the University of Central Florida, which manages the facility, said in a statement Friday.
<snip>

[Uncwilly]

[tServo]

Burning powdered iron produces only rust and heat as products so no CO2. Iron is abundant and rust is recovered easily since it is a solid. Currently, it only works in an industrial setting that requires a furnace. The Netherlands is leading the way on research and have installed a furnace at a brewery so they have beer being made by burning iron.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise...e-co2free-fuel

[xilman]

Originally Posted by tServo

Burning powdered iron produces only rust and heat as products so no CO2. Iron is abundant and rust is recovered easily since it is a solid. Currently, it only works in an industrial setting that requires a furnace. The Netherlands is leading the way on research and have installed a furnace at a brewery so they have beer being made by burning iron.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise...e-co2free-fuel

How do you produce the iron which you then burn?

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by xilman

How do you produce the iron which you then burn?

I second. I was also wondering how pure the iron has to be.

Mining, smelting, and pulverizing iron seems a rather energy-intensive first step.

OTOH it might be possible to extract pure enough rust from red dirt cheaply (and which would already be in small particles), and de-oxidize it to produce iron, as described in the article.

The article acknowledges that using iron as fuel is an energy-losing proposition, but claims that the energy required for reprocessing could be obtained without fossil fuels.

[rogue]

Brain Scientists Explore the How of When

During the Covid-19 Pandemic, Avid Collectors Find Joy in Their Prized Possessions

How your brain conjures dreams

Academics, video game makers team up in rare collaboration

Puzzle Business Goes 'Bonkers' As People Seek Pandemic Pastimes At Home

Rethinking what we mean by intelligence

Re-mapping taste in the brain

Two centuries of Monarch butterflies show evolution of wing length

Human Intelligence Just Got Less Mysterious

‘BLACK BEAUTY’ MAY BLOW UP WATER’S ORIGIN STORY

Cat at Northeast’s highest peak dies after 12 years on duty

What We Lose When We Lose Museums

Alex Trebek on Why ‘Jeopardy’ Represents the American Dream

What 50 Gravitational-Wave Events Reveal about the Universe

VOLCANOES FEED THE ATMOSPHERE ON JUPITER’S MOON IO

The 11 Greatest Vacuum Tubes You’ve Never Heard Of

Fast, cheap, accurate: Researchers pin hopes on Nobel Prize-winning CRISPR technology to detect coronavirus

A Fraction of a Second Is All You Need to Feel the Music

[tServo]

The protein folding challenge is to create a 3-d model of a protein from its amino acid sequence.
This is huge and might be as significant as CRISPR/CAS9. It was one of Biology's "grand challenges". Google's AI not only won the competition but also crossed a performance threshold that makes its results much more useable for researchers.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03348-4

[xilman]

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-dat...rom-the-1960-s

What goes around comes around.

[rogue]

Basketball on the brain: Neuroscientists use sports to study surprise

Underwater Photographer Captures the Unique Beauty of Swimming With Humpback Whales

The future of work is written

Why people are turning to robots when they’re sad and anxious at work

Laughing Is Good for Your Mind and Your Body, Here’s What the Research Shows

A New Study About Color Tries to Decode ‘The Brain’s Pantone’

Research unlocks new information about reading through visual dictionary in the brain

The Hot New Covid Tech Is Wearable and Constantly Tracks You

You won’t believe what realtors are finding in empty offices right now

Wearable Imaging Cap Provides a Window Into Babies’ Brains

The Tragedy of a Ruined Telescope

Google Doodle celebrates Benoit Mandelbrot, 'father of fractal geometry'

Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2020