Exploring The Sounds And Sights Of Alien Worlds

December 2, 2024 by Maya Posch 14 Comments

The 20th century saw humankind’s first careful steps outside of the biosphere in which our species has evolved. Whereas before humans had experienced the bitter cold of high altitudes, the crushing pressures in Earth’s oceans, as well as the various soundscapes and vistas offered in Earth’s biosphere, beyond Earth’s atmosphere we encountered something completely new. Departing Earth’s gravitational embrace, the first humans who ventured into space could see the glowing biosphere superimposed against the seemingly black void of space, in which stars, planets and more would only appear when blending out the intense light from the Earth and its life-giving Sun.

Years later, the first humans to set foot on the Moon experienced again something unlike anything anyone has experienced since. Walking around on the lunar regolith in almost complete vacuum and with very low gravity compared to Earth, it was both strangely familiar and hauntingly alien. Although humans haven’t set foot on Mars yet, we have done the next best thing, with a range of robotic explorers with cameras and microphones to record the experience for us here back on Earth.

Unlike the Moon, Mars has a thin but very real atmosphere which permits the travel of soundwaves, so what does the planet sound like? Despite what fictional stories like Weir’s The Martian like to claim, reality is in fact stranger than fiction, with for example a 2024 research article by Martin Gillier et al. as published in JGR Planets finding highly variable acoustics during Mars’ seasons. How much of what we consider to be ‘normal’ is just Earth’s normal?

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8-Bit Computers Crunch Advanced Scientific Computations

December 1, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 37 Comments

Although largely relegated to retrocomputing enthusiasts and embedded systems or microcontrollers now, there was a time when there were no other computers available other than those with 8-bit processors. The late 70s and early 80s would have seen computers with processors like the Motorola 6800 or Intel 8080 as the top-of-the-line equipment and, while underpowered by modern standards, these machines can do quite a bit of useful work even today. Mathematician [Jean Michel Sellier] wanted to demonstrate this so he set up a Commodore 64 to study some concepts like simulating a quantum computer.

The computer programs he’s written to do this work are in BASIC, a common high-level language of the era designed for ease of use. To simulate the quantum computer he sets up a matrix-vector multiplication but simplifies it using conditional logic. Everything is shown using the LIST command so those with access to older hardware like this can follow along. From there this quantum computer even goes as far as demonstrating a quantum full adder.

There are a number of other videos on other topics available as well. For example, there’s an AmigaBasic program that simulates quantum wave packets and a QBasic program that helps visualize the statistical likelihood of finding an electron at various locations around a hydrogen nucleus. While not likely to displace any supercomputing platforms anytime soon, it’s a good look at how you don’t need a lot of computing power in all situations. And, if you need a refresher on some of these concepts, there’s an overview on how modern quantum computers work here.

A researcher in a safety harness pollinates an American chestnut tree from a lift. Another researcher is on the other side of the lift and appears to be taking notes. The tree has bags over some of its branches, presumably to control the pollen that gets in. The lift has a grey platform and orange arm.

Hacking Trees To Bring Back The American Chestnut

November 29, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 34 Comments

“Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” is playing on the radio now in the Northern Hemisphere which begs the question, “What happened to the American chestnut?” Would you be surprised to hear there’s a group dedicated to bringing it back from “functional extinction?” [via Inhabitat]

Between logging and the introduction of chestnut blight, the once prevalent American chestnut became increasingly uncommon throughout its traditional range in the Appalachians. While many trees in the southern range were killed by Phytophthora root rot (PRR), the chestnut blight leaves roots intact, so many chestnuts have been surviving by growing back from the roots only to succumb to the blight and be reborn again. Now, scientists are using a combination of techniques to develop blight-resistant trees from this remaining population.

The American Chestnut Foundation recognizes you can’t improve what you can’t measure and uses a combination of “small stem assays (SSAs) performed on potted seedlings, improved phenotype scoring methods for field-grown trees, and the use of genomic prediction models for scoring resistance based on genotype.” This allows them to more rapidly screen varieties for blight resistance to further their efforts. One approach is based on conventional plant breeding techniques and has been crossing blight and PRR-resistant Chinese chestnuts with the American type. PRR resistance has been found to be less genetically complicated, so progress has been faster on resistance to that particular problem. Continue reading “Hacking Trees To Bring Back The American Chestnut” →

Could Nuclear Be The Way To Produce Synthetic Fuel On The Cheap?

November 27, 2024 by Lewin Day 127 Comments

Fossil fuels can be a bit fussy to access, and geopolitics tends to make prices volatile. Burning them also takes carbon out of the ground and puts it into the atmosphere, with undesirable climate implications. The hunt for a solution has been on for quite some time.

Various synthetic fuels have been proposed as a solution, wherein carbon dioxide is captured from the air and chemically processed into useful fuel. Done properly, this could solve the climate issue where any fuel burned has its carbon later captured to make more fuel. The problem, though, is that this process is very energy intensive. Given the demands, it’s no surprise that some are looking towards nuclear reactors for the answer.

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Life Found On Ryugu Asteroid Sample, But It Looks Very Familiar

November 27, 2024 by Donald Papp 72 Comments

Samples taken from the space-returned piece of asteroid Ryugu were collected and prepared under strict anti-contamination controls. Inside the cleanest of clean rooms, a tiny particle was collected from the returned sample with sterilized tools in a nitrogen atmosphere and stored in airtight containers before being embedded in an epoxy block for scanning electron microscopy.

It’s hard to imagine what more one could do, but despite all the precautions taken, the samples were rapidly colonized by terrestrial microorganisms. Only the upper few microns of the sample surface, but it happened. That’s what the images above show.

The surface of Ryugu from Rover 1B’s camera. Source: JAXA

Obtaining a sample from asteroid Ryugu was a triumph. Could this organic matter have come from the asteroid itself? In a word, no. Researchers have concluded the microorganisms are almost certainly terrestrial bacteria that contaminated the sample during collection, despite the precautions taken.

You can read the study to get all the details, but it seems that microorganisms — our world’s greatest colonizers — can circumvent contamination controls. No surprise, in a way. Every corner of our world is absolutely awash in microbial life. Opening samples on Earth comes with challenges.

As for off-Earth, robots may be doing the exploration but despite NASA assembling landers in clean room environments we may have already inadvertently exported terrestrial microbes to the Moon, and Mars. The search for life to which we are not related is one of science and humanity’s greatest quests, but it seems life found on a space-returned samples will end up looking awfully familiar until we step up our game.

Humans Can Learn Echolocation Too

November 26, 2024 by Lewin Day 50 Comments

Most of us associate echolocation with bats. These amazing creatures are able to chirp at frequencies beyond the limit of our hearing, and they use the reflected sound to map the world around them. It’s the perfect technology for navigating pitch-dark cave systems, so it’s understandable why evolution drove down this innovative path.

Humans, on the other hand, have far more limited hearing, and we’re not great chirpers, either. And yet, it turns out we can learn this remarkable skill, too. In fact, research suggests it’s far more achievable than you might think—for the sighted and vision impaired alike!

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3D Space Can Be Tiled With Corner-free Shapes

November 23, 2024 by Donald Papp 28 Comments

Tiling a space with a repeated pattern that has no gaps or overlaps (a structure known as a tessellation) is what led mathematician [Gábor Domokos] to ponder a question: how few corners can a shape have and still fully tile a space? In a 2D the answer is two, and a 3D space can be tiled in shapes that have no corners at all, called soft cells.

These shapes can be made in a few different ways, and some are shown here. While they may have sharp edges there are no corners, or points where two or more line segments meet. Shapes capable of tiling a 2D space need a minimum of two corners, but in 3D the rules are different.

A great example of a natural soft cell is found in the chambers of a nautilus shell, but this turned out to be far from obvious. A cross-section of a nautilus shell shows a cell structure with obvious corners, but it turns out that’s just an artifact of looking at a 2D slice. When viewed in full 3D — which the team could do thanks to a micro CT scan available online — there are no visible corners in the structure. Once they knew what to look for, it was clear that soft cells are present in a variety of natural forms in our world.

[Domokos] not only seeks a better mathematical understanding of these shapes that seem common in our natural world but also wonders how they might relate to aperiodicity, or the ability of a shape to tile a space without making a repeating pattern. Penrose Tiles are probably the most common example.