Andrea Gianopoulos, 4 Jan. 2023, NASA.

Excerpt:

>In giant clusters of hundreds or thousands of galaxies, innumerable stars wander among the galaxies like lost souls, emitting a ghostly haze of light. These stars are not gravitationally tied to any one galaxy in a cluster.

>The nagging question for astronomers has been: how did the stars get so scattered throughout the cluster in the first place?

>A recent infrared survey from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which looked for this so-called "intracluster light," sheds new light on the mystery.

>The new Hubble observations suggest that these stars have been wandering around for billions of years, and are not a product of more recent dynamical activity inside a galaxy cluster that would strip them out of normal galaxies.

>The survey included 10 galaxy clusters as far away as nearly 10 billion light-years. These measurements must be made from space because the faint intracluster light is 10,000 times dimmer than the night sky as seen from the ground.

>The survey reveals that the fraction of the intracluster light relative to the total light in the cluster remains constant, looking over billions of years back into time.

>"This means that these stars were already homeless in the early stages of the cluster's formation," said James Jee of Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.

Nature, 4 Jan. 2023, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05396-4

>tornpentacle

>Here's the actual paper, because...Vice, seriously?

Linked content from Motherboard/Vice includes remarks from a call with co-author Daniel Brandenburg.

For example, in my excerpt comment:

>“There's never been any measurement in the past of interference between distinguishable particles,” said Daniel Brandenburg, a physics professor at the Ohio State University who co-authored the new study, in a call with Motherboard. “That's the discovery; the application is that we get to use it to do some nuclear physics.”

Becky Ferreira, 4 Jan. 2023, Motherboard, Vice Media.

>For the first time ever, scientists at Brookhaven have captured interference patterns that are created by the entanglement of two particles with different charges, a breakthrough that has opened up a completely new window into the mysterious innards of atoms that make up visible matter in the universe, according to a study published on Wednesday in Science Advances.

>“There's never been any measurement in the past of interference between distinguishable particles,” said Daniel Brandenburg, a physics professor at the Ohio State University who co-authored the new study, in a call with Motherboard. “That's the discovery; the application is that we get to use it to do some nuclear physics.”

>“I wasn't even, in a sense, trying to find something so fundamental about quantum mechanics,” he continued. “When we realized that there's something really interesting going on here, that was a really big surprise to me.”

> 

>Brandenburg and his colleagues achieved this milestone with the help of a sensitive detector called the Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC, or STAR, that captured interactions between gold ions that were boosted to the brink of light speed.

>Clouds of photons, which are particles that carry light, surround the ions and interact with another type of particle, called gluons, that hold atomic nuclei together.

>These encounters between the photons and the gluons set off a chain of events that ultimately created two new particles, called pions, which have opposite charges—one positive and one negative.

>When these pions careened into the STAR detector, the precision instrument measured some of their key properties, such as velocity and angle of impact, which were then used to probe the size, shape, and arrangement of gluons inside the atomic nuclei with a precision that has never been achieved before.

>What’s more, the team is even able to make out the rough positions of key particles in the nucleus, such as protons and neutrons, as well as the distribution of gluons.

>It also offers a new way to unravel persistent mysteries about the behavior of atoms at high energies.

Science Advances, Jan. 2023. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abq3903

Jennifer Ouellette, 1 January 2023, Ars Technica (Condé Nast)

Excerpt:

>Scientists attached GoPro cameras to six dolphins and captured the sights and sounds of the animals as they hunted and devoured various species of fish—even squealing in victory at the capture of baby sea snakes, according to an August paper published in the journal PLoS ONE.

>While sound and video has previously been recorded for dolphins finding and eating dead fish, per the authors, this is the first footage combining sound and video from the dolphins' point of view as they pursued live prey while freely swimming.

>The audio element enabled the scientists to learn more about how the dolphins communicated while hunting.

Paper in PLoS ONE, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265382

Video of dolphin S capturing fish in San Diego Bay, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265382.s001 (MP4)

Video of dolphin Z catching sea snakes in the Pacific Ocean with obvious head jerks and a victory squeal, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265382.s002 (MP4)

Slowed down video of an escaping sea snake with notable dolphin clicks, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265382.s003 (MP4)

>https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themis/auroras/aurora_history.html

Is there a peer-reviewed paper documenting the quote by Fu Pao? The THEMIS webpage was last updated in 2006, and I couldn’t find a primary source that the unnamed author may have cited.

>BuffaloOk7264

>Where in China and what time of year?

In my excerpt comment:

>Advances in Space Research, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.asr.2022.01.010

In the abstract:

>We have located the observational site around Hàojīng (N34°14′, E108°46′) and dated the event to 977 ± 1 or 957 ± 1 BCE. On this basis, we have computed the equatorward extension of the auroral visibility as ≤39.0° in magnetic latitude and reconstructed the equatorward boundary of the auroral oval as ≤45.5° in invariant latitude.

Jennifer Ouellette, 1 January 2023, Ars Technica (Condé Nast)

Excerpt:

>The Bamboo Annals is a chronicle of ancient China, written on bamboo strips, that begins with the age of the Yellow Emperor and runs through the so-called Warring States period (5th century–221 BCE), when rival states were engaged in intense competition. It ended when the state of Qin unified the states.

>The original text of the Bamboo Annals was buried with King Xiang of Wei, who died in 296 BCE, and wasn't discovered until 281 CE, thus surviving Emperor Qin Shi Huang's burning of the books in 212 BCE (not to mention burying hundreds of Confucian scholars alive).

>Independent researcher Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs and Hisashi Hayakawa of Nagoya University relied on the ancient text [version] for their new analysis.

>This text describes the appearance of a "five-colored light" visible in the northern part of the night sky towards the end of the reign of King Zhao of the Zhou dynasty.

>While this is technically an unconfirmed candidate aurora, "The explicit mention of nighttime observation rules out daytime manifestations of atmospheric optics, which sometimes mimic candidate events," the authors wrote.

>Furthermore, "The occurrence of a multicolored phenomenon in the northern sky during the nighttime is consistent with visual auroral displays in mid-latitude regions."

> 

>The authors peg the likely date of the event to either 977 or 957 BCE. The next earliest description of a candidate aurora is found on Assyrian cuneiform tablets dated between 679-655 BCE, three centuries later.

>There are two versions of the Bamboo Annals still in existence. One is known as the "current text," consisting of two scrolls printed in the late 16th century. Many scholars believe this text is a forgery, given the many discrepancies between its text and portions of the original quoted in older books, although some scholars have argued that some parts might be faithful to the original text.

>The other version is known as the "ancient text," and was pieced together by studying the aforementioned quoted portions found in older books, especially two dating back to the early 8th century CE.

Advances in Space Research, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.asr.2022.01.010

Excerpt:

>A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the Israeli Earth-imaging satellite EROS C-3 into orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California late Thursday night (Dec. 29), releasing the payload into orbit about 15 minutes after leaving Earth.

>Liftoff occurred at 11:38 p.m. PST at the launch site (2:38 a.m. EST/0738 GMT), with the Falcon 9's first stage returning to land at a nearby SpaceX pad about 8 minutes into the flight.

>"This is our 61st and final SpaceX launch of 2022," Jesse Anderson, SpaceX's production and engineering manager, said during a live webcast.

>The EROS C-3 launch also marked SpaceX's second launch in as many days.

>On Wednesday (Dec. 28), the company launched its first Gen2 Starlink internet satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base in Florida, delivering 54 of the next-generation Starlinks into orbit.

Elizabeth Howell, 29 December 2022, Space.com (Future plc)

Ioana Patringenaru, 28 December 2022.

Excerpt:

>A team of engineers and neuroscientists has demonstrated for the first time that human brain organoids implanted in mice have established functional connectivity to the animals’ cortex and responded to external sensory stimuli.

>Human cortical organoids are derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells, which are usually derived themselves from skin cells.

>These brain organoids have recently emerged as promising models to study the development of the human brain, as well as a range of neurological conditions.

>The implanted organoids reacted to visual stimuli in the same way as surrounding tissues, an observation that researchers were able to make in real time over several months thanks to an innovative experimental setup that combines transparent graphene microelectrode arrays and two-photon imaging.

> 

>“No other study has been able to record optically and electrically at the same time,” said Madison Wilson, the paper’s first author and a Ph.D. student in Kuzum’s [Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering] research group at UC San Diego.

>Graphene recordings showed increases in the power of gamma oscillations and phase locking of spikes from organoids to slow oscillations from mouse visual cortex.

>These findings suggest that the organoids had established synaptic connections with surrounding cortex tissue three weeks after implantation, and received functional input from the mouse brain.

>“We envision that, further along the road, this combination of stem cells and neurorecording technologies will be used for modeling disease under physiological conditions; examining candidate treatments on patient-specific organoids; and evaluating organoids’ potential to restore specific lost, degenerated or damaged brain regions,” Kuzum said.

The work was funded through the National Institutes of Health and the Research Council of Norway, as well as the National Science Foundation.

Nature Communications, 2022. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-35536-3

Excerpt:

>During the seminar entitled ‘Components of Scientific Literacy and Insight into the Steps of Research in History of Physics’, the students learned about the historical aspect of physical theories and discussed the importance of scientific literacy in daily life. After the seminar, they were given two assignments.

>Using the pre-test and the post-test, we assessed and statistically estimated the development of the students’ scientific research skills.

>The pre-test (Appendix A) defined a scientific problem and enabled students to think like a scientist.

>The post-test (Appendix B) was followed by an evaluation of the pre-test results and a comprehensive discussion. The evaluation of the pre-test results served as a starting point for the discussion. I selected some examples of the answers in the pre-test, which we analysed together.

>The comprehensive discussion highlighted important factors of procedural knowledge of scientific research in various cases, covering different areas of the disciplines, both natural and social sciences.

>In the post-test, the students were given the same task, but they were asked to find their own problem and tackle it using the steps they had learned.

> 

>The results of this study suggest that it is not enough to simply conduct an experiment and focus on the content of the experiment.

>In addition to direct experience with experiments, it is also very important to discuss the research process itself, to articulate and justify a single step in the research process in order to increase awareness of the importance of the research procedure.

International Journal of Science Education, 2022. 10.1080/09500693.2022.2105414

Excerpt:

>TOKYO -- The next-generation fighter jet planned by Japan, the U.K. and Italy may be developed through a joint venture and built in more than one country, according to officials at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), one of the prime contractors for the program.

>Sixth-generation fighters are expected to perform a central role in network-centric warfare, which aims to integrate the assets of the various military branches to devise the most efficient attack.

>The three countries are in broad agreement on the capabilities they want the new aircraft to have, but they still have to work out the program's details, such as the project timeline and where to manufacture components.

> 

>BAE Systems and Leonardo have experience developing and marketing fighter jets for the global market. Mitsubishi Heavy, which developed the F-2 fighter, has only produced equipment for the Japanese market and is looking to its European partners for international expertise.

>The common language of the project will be English, and already many British and Italians have visited MHI's development office in the central Japanese city of Nagoya to discuss details.

>BAE Systems said, "Discussions are ongoing and no decisions [regarding a joint venture or other matters] have been made," in a written response to a request for comment.

>Competition in the market for next-generation fighters is expected to be intense. France, Germany and Spain, for instance, last month agreed to move forward with development of a fighter jet to replace the French Rafale, and German and Spanish Eurofighters, beginning in 2040.

Rhyannon Bartlett-Imadegawa and Mitsuru Obe, Nikkei, 29 December 2022.

Laura Bandell, 19 December 2022.

Excerpt:

>Earth formed in the dry inner Solar System. It would have remained inhospitable and lifeless, had water not been transported to it by asteroids that originated in the outer Solar System.

>Using world-class oxygen isotope analysis facilities at The Open University (OU), an international team (Team Kochi) has been studying precious samples returned to Earth in 2020 from asteroid 162173 Ryugu by the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) Hayabusa2 spacecraft.

>The results of this new study clearly show that the Ryugu particles are a very close match to a rare group of water-rich meteorites known as the CIs (Ivuna type)1. CIs are extremely fragile materials and normally fragment during atmospheric entry and so, generally, fail to make it to the Earth’s surface as recoverable samples.

> 

>Identification of asteroid Ryugu as a CI-type body suggests that this group is much more widespread amongst the asteroid population than its limited presence in our meteorite collections suggests.

>This new finding has important implications for how Earth got its water, because CIs are also the most water-rich meteorite group we know of.

>Dr Richard Greenwood, who led the analysis work at the OU explains further:

>”Our results demonstrate that the material collected from asteroid Ryugu is closely similar to the composition of those early hydrated asteroids that brought life-giving water to Earth. In a very real sense, these “killer” asteroids saved planet Earth.”

Nature Astronomy, 2022. DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01824-7

"This is the first study on the continuous infrared expansion technology for popcorn popping, and the findings show that the IR expansion method is very efficient in the popcorn popping process," the authors conclude in ACS Food Science & Technology, 2022, DOI: 10.1021/acsfoodscitech.2c00188

Excerpt:

>This latest paper follows up on [previously published] proof of principle to take a closer look at how the continuous infrared cooking process affects key features of popcorn: color, shape, odor, taste, and texture (which is influenced by how much the popcorn expands), all of which contribute to the sensory pleasures of popcorn.

>[Shavandi et al.] used the same prototype infrared popcorn popper as before for their experiments, testing power levels of 600, 700, and 800 W. Then a sensory panel of taste testers evaluated the final products on a scale of 1 to 5.

>The team found that using 700 W power produced the highest yield of fully or semi-popped popcorn.

>That power level also produced the highest ratings (4 or higher) by the sensory panel, who identified those batches as having the best color, taste, and firmness.

Jennifer Ouellette, 28 December 2022, Ars Technica (Condé Nast)

Cecilia D'Anastasio, 27 December 2022, Bloomberg.com

Excerpt:

>(Bloomberg) -- A group of Activision Blizzard video-game employees in Boston said Tuesday they’re organizing a union with the Communications Workers of America.

>The 57-person Proletariat unit that’s filed for a union representation includes designers, animators, engineers, producers and quality assurance workers, according to a statement.

>Irvine, California-based Activision acquired Proletariat and its 100 workers in June, 2022 to aid in its World of Warcraft franchise.

>The organization will be the third this year at Activision — workers at the gaming giant’s Raven Software first organized a union in January this year, while those at Blizzard Albany voted to unionize in December.

> 

>“Earlier this year, when we heard that Blizzard was planning to acquire Proletariat, we started to discuss how we could protect the great culture we have created here,” Proletariat software engineer Dustin Yost said in an emailed statement. “By forming a union and negotiating a contract, we can make sure that we are able to continue doing our best work and create innovative experiences at the frontier of game development.”

>Activision Blizzard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Further reading:

Proletariat workers become third group of Activision Blizzard workers to form union with Communications Workers of America, 27 December 2022, https://cwa-union.org/proletariat_joins_communications_workers_of_america_union

In The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, DOI 10.1177/07067437221114094:

>Opioid use disorder (OUD) is a chronic relapsing disorder with a problematic pattern of opioid use, affecting nearly 27 million people worldwide. Machine learning (ML)-based prediction of OUD may lead to early detection and intervention.

>In the current study, we aimed to develop and prospectively validate an ML model that could predict individual OUD cases based on representative large-scale health data.

In the linked release written by Gillian Rutherford, 7 December 2022:

>Opioid use disorder is a treatable, chronic disease in which patients can't control their opioid use, leading to difficulties at work or home, and sometimes even overdose and death, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

>People with opioid use disorder are originally exposed to the drugs either through prescriptions to manage pain or through the illicit drug market.

>“Most of those people have interacted with the health system before their diagnosis, and that provides us with data that could allow us to predict and potentially prevent some of the cases,” says principal investigator Bo Cao, Canada Research Chair in Computational Psychiatry and associate professor of psychiatry.

> 

>The machine learning model analyzed health data from nearly 700,000 Alberta patients who received prescriptions for opioids between 2014 and 2018, cross-referencing 62 factors such as the number of doctor and emergency room visits, diagnoses and sociodemographic information.

>The team found the top risk factors for opioid use disorder included frequency of opioid use, high dosage and a history of other substance use disorders, among others.

>They determined the model predicted high-risk patients with an accuracy of 86 per cent when it was validated against a new sample of 316,000 patients from 2019.

>“It’s important that the model’s prediction of whether someone will develop opioid use disorder is interpreted as a risk instead of a label,” says first author Yang Liu, post-doctoral fellow in psychiatry. “It is information to put into the hands of clinicians, who are actually making the diagnosis.”

University of Alberta

24 December 2022.

Excerpt:

>In 2022 tech’s luck ran out. It has been a difficult year for everyone: the S&P 500, an index of America’s largest firms, has fallen by a fifth since January.

>But digital firms have been hit harder, with the NASDAQ composite, a tech-heavy index, losing a third of its value. Tech’s five giants have collectively lost a dizzying $3trn in market value.

>The most dramatic loser, Meta, barely even counts as part of “big” tech any more—nearly two-thirds of its value was wiped out, leaving its market capitalisation at just over $300bn.

> 

>The end of tech exceptionalism has several causes.

>One is that after years of growth, digital markets are maturing. Take advertising, the lifeblood of Alphabet and Meta, and a growing sideline for Amazon, Apple and Microsoft. In July Meta reported its first-ever quarterly drop in revenue; in October it reported another.

>The next change is competition. For years tech was synonymous with concentrated markets: Google monopolising search, Facebook dominating social media, and so on. These days competition is fierce.

>These changes in the structure of the tech business have coincided with headwinds that are particularly troublesome for digital companies. In America the Federal Reserve has raised the upper bound on its policy interest rate to 4.5%, from 0.25% in January, as it battles inflation.

>This makes life harder for all businesses. But tech companies, whose high valuations reflect investors’ belief that they will deliver outsized earnings far in future, look much less appealing in a world of high rates, which erode the present value of those promised earnings.

> 

>Semiconductors have been another sore spot in the tech world. [Just] as chip production bloomed, demand withered, thanks to falling sales of PCs and smartphones.

>Geopolitical tensions added to the strife. America announced several new trade restrictions on the export of semiconductor equipment to China, the world’s biggest buyer of chips. China has also become an operationally riskier place.

>These difficulties mean that the year ahead will be a lean one in techland. Most have made a resolution to trim their costs, which in many cases means cutting the payroll.

>Tech firms worldwide have announced more than 150,000 job cuts so far in 2022, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website.

The Economist

Excerpt:

>Here, we document the clash of perspectives that arose on Twitter around the BLM protests in 2020. Critically, we address the questions of who produces news coverage and how audiences respond to it.

>Social media users consume much more content than they produce^27 which allows mainstream media and other content creators to have an influence on the platform.

>Our analyses show that most of the news sources posted on social media as the massive street protests unfolded are produced by media with a right-leaning ideological slant (in partisan terms) and that this content generates more engagement in the form of retweet activity, thus increasing its reach.

>Our results suggest that right-leaning domains do better (in terms of gaining visibility and engagement) than left-leaning domains. The right, in other words, has an advantage in the attention economy social media creates.

> 

>The social signals users create when engaging with content (to praise or criticize it) are picked up by the automated curation systems that determine which posts are seen first on users’ feeds.

>Our analyses cannot parse out which of these mechanisms (intentional seeding versus counter-attitudinal sharing; social versus algorithmic amplification) are the most relevant in explaining the asymmetries we observe.

>But these asymmetries are the aggregated manifestation of social and technological mechanisms and, regardless of the motivation of users in sharing certain URLs or the specific parameters of curation algorithms, the result is still an asymmetric information environment where some coverage gains more traction and visibility.

>The increased visibility of right-leaning content we identify can also result from the larger supply of content with a specific partisan slant: the users in our data are, in the end, picking content to share from a set of available sources.

>It is plausible that the asymmetry starts at the supply stage within the larger media environment, where news deserts are growing, and the gaps left by local newspapers is being filled by a network of websites created by conservative political groups^28 known as the right-wing media ecosystem^7.

PNAS Nexus, 2022. DOI 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac137

>Lord0fHats

>This article is wrong in acting like this is new. Lidar has been getting used in this region for a decade.

The article is describing the discovery of settlements and the scope of its LiDAR survey. Where does it state that LiDAR is new?

What is stated, in the article:

>Scientists led by Richard Hansen, an archaeologist at Idaho State University and the director of the Mirador Basin Project, offer “an introduction to one of the largest, contiguous, regional LiDAR studies published to date in the Maya Lowlands,” a region that covers parts of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, according to the study.

ETA:

>Lord0fHats

>You picked the title of the thread.

>Also the article uses the words 'lost' and 'discovered.'

Are your comments intended to create off-topic discussion based on select words, instead of discussing the linked article itself?

Becky Ferreira, 22 December 2022, Motherboard (Vice)

Excerpt:

>Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a vast ancient Maya civilization that flourished more than 2,000 years ago in northern Guatemala, reports a new study.

>This long-lost urban web encompassed nearly 1,000 settlements across 650 square miles, linked by an immense causeway system, which was mapped out with airborne laser instruments, known as LiDAR.

>The results of the LiDAR survey “unveiled a remarkable density of Maya sites” in Guatemala’s Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin (MCKB) that “challenges the old notion of sparse early human occupation” in this area during the “Preclassical” period spanning 1,000 BC to 150 AD, according to a study published this month in Cambridge Core.

>The discovery sheds light on the people who lived in the bustling cities of this forested basin for more than 1,000 years.

Ancient Mesoamerica, 2022. DOI 10.1017/S0956536122000244

Excerpt:

>Microsoft faces legal action from 10 gamers to block its merger with Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard.

>The lawsuit filed in a US federal court says the $69bn (£56bn) deal by the Xbox console maker to purchase its rival will "create a monopoly in the video game industry".

>The proposed acquisition would give Microsoft "far-outsized market power in the video game industry," according to the complaint "with the ability to foreclose rivals, limit output, reduce consumer choice, raise prices, and further inhibit competition."

>The complaint comes two weeks after US regulators filed a case with an administrative judge to block the deal.

>The takeover, which was announced in January, also faces legal action in the European Union and the UK.

>Microsoft has not responded to the BBC for comment.

Monica Miller in Singapore, 21 December 2022.

>JimmiRustle

>Not to rain in anyones parade but was there any reason said scientists thought antimatter couldn’t travel through space?

In my excerpt comment, from the linked article:

>most antinuclei are forged in the dense messy region near the center of our galaxy, tens of thousands of light years away from Earth, so it’s not clear how many of these messengers can reach us across that vast distance.

and

>The results revealed that antinuclei may indeed voyage across the Milky Way to reach Earth, making them “a very promising channel for the discovery of dark matter” now that we know we can likely detect them here, according to a study published on Monday [Dec. 12] in Nature Physics.

ETA: Perhaps read the linked article?

Becky Ferreira, 13 December 2022, Motherboard (Vice Media)

Excerpt:

>One possible method to search for dark matter is to capture “antinuclei,” which are the antimatter versions of the nuclei found in normal atoms. Antinuclei might be generated by interactions between dark matter particles, distinguishing them as a potential window into the longstanding question the nature of this elusive material.

>However, most antinuclei are forged in the dense messy region near the center of our galaxy, tens of thousands of light years away from Earth, so it’s not clear how many of these messengers can reach us across that vast distance.

>Now, scientists have used the ALICE detector at the Large Hadron Collider, the biggest particle accelerator on Earth, to estimate the “transparency” of our galaxy to helium antinuclei, a measurement that makes it possible to estimate how far these particles can travel before they encounter regular matter and disappear.

> 

>The results revealed that antinuclei may indeed voyage across the Milky Way to reach Earth, making them “a very promising channel for the discovery of dark matter” now that we know we can likely detect them here, according to a study published on Monday [Dec. 12] in Nature Physics.

>“Antinuclei don’t travel straight through the galaxy because they are charged and there are magnetic fields” in the Milky Way, said Maximiliano Puccio, a member of the ALICE collaboration and a co-author of the new study, in a call with Motherboard.

>“This means they have a very contorted path of coming to the Earth that is much longer than the linear distance from the center of the galaxy.”

>“When we put all the ingredients together” at CERN “and we saw that half of the [antinuclei] survive, that was quite something,” he added, noting that the finding suggests that these strange particles can wind up around Earth.

Nature Physics, 2022. DOI 10.1038/s41567-022-01804-8

Becky Ferreira, 13 December 2022, Motherboard (Vice Media)

Excerpt:

>One possible method to search for dark matter is to capture “antinuclei,” which are the antimatter versions of the nuclei found in normal atoms. Antinuclei might be generated by interactions between dark matter particles, distinguishing them as a potential window into the longstanding question the nature of this elusive material.

>However, most antinuclei are forged in the dense messy region near the center of our galaxy, tens of thousands of light years away from Earth, so it’s not clear how many of these messengers can reach us across that vast distance.

>Now, scientists have used the ALICE detector at the Large Hadron Collider, the biggest particle accelerator on Earth, to estimate the “transparency” of our galaxy to helium antinuclei, a measurement that makes it possible to estimate how far these particles can travel before they encounter regular matter and disappear.

> 

>The results revealed that antinuclei may indeed voyage across the Milky Way to reach Earth, making them “a very promising channel for the discovery of dark matter” now that we know we can likely detect them here, according to a study published on Monday [Dec. 12] in Nature Physics.

>“Antinuclei don’t travel straight through the galaxy because they are charged and there are magnetic fields” in the Milky Way, said Maximiliano Puccio, a member of the ALICE collaboration and a co-author of the new study, in a call with Motherboard.

>“This means they have a very contorted path of coming to the Earth that is much longer than the linear distance from the center of the galaxy.”

>“When we put all the ingredients together” at CERN “and we saw that half of the [antinuclei] survive, that was quite something,” he added, noting that the finding suggests that these strange particles can wind up around Earth.

Nature Physics, 2022. DOI 10.1038/s41567-022-01804-8

University of Bristol, 16 December 2022.

Professor Emily Rayfield, senior co-author:

>“Our analyses reveal that ornithischians – the group that includes many plant-eating species like the horned dinosaurs, the armoured ankylosaurs and the duck-billed dinosaurs – started off as omnivores.

>“And another interesting finding is that the earliest sauropodomorphs, ancestors of the veggie long-necked sauropods like Diplodocus, were carnivores. This shows that herbivory was not ancestral for any of these two lineages, countering traditional hypotheses, and that the diets of early dinosaurs were quite diverse.”

Lead author Dr. Antonio Ballell:

>“We investigated [dinosaur diet] by applying a set of computational methods to quantify the shape and function of the teeth of early dinosaurs and compare them to living reptiles that have different diets. This included mathematically modelling their tooth shapes and simulating their mechanical responses to biting forces with engineering software.”

Professor Mike Benton, co-author:

>“With this battery of methods, we were able to numerically quantify how similar early dinosaurs were to modern animals, providing solid evidence for our inferences of diets. Theropod dinosaurs have pointy, curved and blade-like teeth with tiny serrations, which behaved like those of modern monitor lizards. In contrast, the denticulated teeth of ornithischians and sauropodomorphs are more similar to modern omnivores and herbivores, like iguanas.”

Science Advances, 2022. DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abq5201

15 December 2022.

Excerpt:

>A team led by UdeM astronomers has found evidence that two exoplanets orbiting a red dwarf star are “water worlds,” planets where water makes up a large fraction of the volume.

>The team, led by PhD student Caroline Piaulet of the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) at the Université de Montréal, published a detailed study of a planetary system known as Kepler-138 in the journal Nature Astronomy today.

>Water wasn’t directly detected, but by comparing the sizes and masses of the planets [Kepler-138c and d] to models, they conclude that a significant fraction of their volume — up to half of it — should be made of materials that are lighter than rock but heavier than hydrogen or helium (which constitute the bulk of gas giant planets like Jupiter).

>The most common of these candidate materials is water.

> 

>The closest comparison to the two planets, say researchers, would be some of the icy moons in the outer solar system that are also largely composed of water surrounding a rocky core.

>Researchers caution the planets may not have oceans like those on Earth directly at the planet’s surface.

>“The temperature in Kepler-138c's and Kepler-138d’s atmospheres is likely above the boiling point of water, and we expect a thick, dense atmosphere made of steam on these planets. Only under that steam atmosphere there could potentially be liquid water at high pressure, or even water in another phase that occurs at high pressures, called a supercritical fluid," Piaulet said.

>The researchers had another surprise: they found that the two water worlds Kepler-138c and d are “twin” planets, with virtually the same size and mass, while they were previously thought to be drastically different.

Nature Astronomy, 2022. DOI 10.1038/s41550-022-01835-4