Understanding what happened to the liquid water that Mars had could provide information about the planet's past habitability.
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A team of astronomers, led by Thibault Cavalie, from the Astrophysics Laboratory in Bordeaux, France, has tracked one of these molecules (hydrogen cyanide) to directly measure stratospheric "jets" on Jupiter (narrow bands of wind in the atmosphere, like Earth's jet streams). .
AND They reach speeds of up to 400 meters per second.
SOUL
These wind speeds, equivalent to about 1,450 km/h, are more than double the maximum storm speeds reached in Jupiter's Great Red Spot and more than triple the wind speed measured in the strongest tornadoes on Earth.
Measuring wind speeds in Jupiter's stratosphere using cloud-tracking techniques is impossible due to the absence of clouds in this part of the atmosphere, so to directly measure Jupiter's mid-atmosphere winds for the first time Jupiter, the ALMA set (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array).
The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which collided with the gas giant in spectacular fashion in 1994. This impact produced new molecules in Jupiter's stratosphere, where they have been moving with the winds ever since. What has been done is to trace one of these molecules (hydrogen cyanide).
The team used 42 of ALMA's 66 high-precision antennas, located in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, to analyze hydrogen cyanide molecules that have been moving in Jupiter's stratosphere since the Shoemaker impact. -Levy 9. According to Thibault Cavalié:
These ALMA results open a new window for the study of the regions of Jupiter with auroras, something truly unexpected just a few months ago.
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The news
Jupiter's stratospheric winds are measured for the first time and they triple the speed of the strongest tornadoes on Earth
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
Discovered in Mexico and analyzed by an international team of paleontologists led by a researcher from the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), the next shark fossil sheds light on the morphological diversity of Cretaceous sharks.
This newly described fossil species, called Aquilolamna milarcae, has allowed its discoverers to build a new family.
93 million years ago
According to the authors of the discovery, which have been described in the journal Science, 93 million years ago, strange winged sharks swam in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The specimen studied was 1.65 meters long and 1.90 meters wide. With its large mouth and supposedly very small teeth, it must have fed on plankton.
Like manta rays, these 'eagle sharks' They are characterized by having extremely long and thin pectoral fins that resemble wings..
Aquilolamna milarcae had a caudal fin with a well-developed upper lobe, typical of most pelagic sharks, such as the whale shark and the tiger shark. Thus, its anatomical characteristics give it a chimerical appearance that combines sharks and rays.
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The news
Unusual, 'winged' shark fossil found, reminiscent of manta rays
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
60 microns (one micron is one thousandth of a millimeter) is the size of the origami bird that you can see in the following video, and which has been prepared thanks to a new technique using new one-micron shape memory actuators that allow atomically thin two-dimensional materials to fold into 3D configurations.
A actuator It is a device capable of transforming hydraulic, pneumatic or electrical energy into the activation of a process in order to generate an effect on an automated process. It receives the order from a regulator or controller and based on it generates the order to activate a final control element.
A quick jolt of voltage
Piezoelectric actuators are those devices that produce movement (displacement) taking advantage of the physical phenomenon of piezoelectricity. The precise movement that results when an electric field is applied to the material is of great value for nanopositioning.
He self-folding origami bird The world's smallest has been created well with actuators that just a quick jolt of voltage, and once the material is bent, it maintains its shape even after the voltage is removed. The machines fold themselves quickly, in 100 milliseconds. They can also be flattened and retracted thousands of times. And they only need one volt to come to life.
According to Itai Cohen, lead author and professor of Physics:
We want to have robots that are microscopic but have brains on board. That means you need to have appendages that are driven by complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) transistors, basically a computer chip on a robot that is 100 microns on one side.
The team is currently working to integrate their shape memory actuators with circuitry to make walking robots with foldable legs.
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The news
This self-folding origami bird is only 60 microns and is the smallest in the world thanks to a new technique
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
Al parecer, estos mamíferos marinos pueden modular el número de veces que el corazón late por minuto de acuerdo con la duración prevista de su próxima inmersión.
Avi Wigderson y László Lovász han recibido el galardón por sus respectivos trabajos en la teoría de la complejidad y la teoría de grafos, y por vincular ambos campos.
Los vegetales responden a él gracias a que sus células presentan un canal transmembranal que es sensible a la frecuencia de oscilación del tallo.
In a period of 850 years, between the year 500 and 1350, forests went from covering 80 % of western and central Europe to only covering 50 %.
In some countries, the reduction was more radical, as is the case of Germany, which went from 70 % to 25 % from 900 to 1900. France went from having 30 million hectares of forests to only 13 million between 800 and 1300.
The destroyers of nature
The past was, on an environmental level, the closest thing to Mad Max. Even some paleoclimatologists suggest that a person in the Iron Age polluted more than a person in today's First World. However, if it does not seem that way to us, it is basically for two reasons: we have idealized the past and, above all, Before we were very few people in the world.
If the human beings who lived a thousand years ago were those who live now in numbers, the current environmental problem would be much more serious. Percentageally, then, we pollute less than before. The problem is that we reproduce at a devilish speed: just one hundred years ago we were 1,650,000,000 now we are 8,000,000,000. A thousand years ago, barely 300 million. Two thousand years ago, 50 million.
We all consume more efficiently than before, but there are many more of us. We also eat a lot more, therefore, so the largest source of sulfur for the environment It is no longer coal power plants but agriculture.
Our ancestors simply wasted energy and polluted the environment using very dirty energy sources such as wood. We hunt and extinct megafauna, being forced to develop agriculture, although one type of agriculture, that of ten thousand years ago, so inefficient and riddled with problems that it made us become shorter than we were due to famines and the proliferation of dozens of new diseases.
According to a new study from researchers at the University of London, the colonization of the Americas at the end of the 15th century killed so many people that it disrupted the Earth's climate. Specifically, the huge swath of abandoned farmland that was reclaimed by fast-growing trees and other vegetation was what removed large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂).
And of course, we set fire to entire forests, we deforested them completely, we cleared them, because it was the most comfortable way to hunt animals, creating types of forest that today seem Edenic to us but that, in the past, were only the result of the brutal hand of human beings, as you can see in the next video:
Fortunately, technology allows us to find other resources or multiply the efficiency of those we already have, thus accessing more calories, lumens, kilowatts, bits and kilometers.
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The news
A thousand years ago we destroyed forests more than we do now because we cared less about nature (and it wasn't even defined in the same way)
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
He feeling of the sublime, a cascade of emotions associated with the aesthetic experience, emerges when we are in front of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado and we feel insignificant. Or we lie under a black blanket of stars and feel infinite. The same thing also happens to us when we are in front of certain works of art.
A new study, the first of its kind, suggests that these emotions can also emerge if we immerse ourselves in a virtual reality environment.
The sublime in 360 degrees
According to Alice Chirico, from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, Italy, and her colleagues, in the open access journal PLOS ONE, the study measured the emotional responses of 50 participants before and after watching 360° immersive videos. The starry Night of Vincent van Gogh and of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, the natural place represented in the painting.
Saint-Rémy-de-Provence
As the authors conclude:
By using virtual reality, we provide the first empirical contribution to the ongoing debate over whether nature or art is better at evoking the experience of the sublime. We discovered that both nature and art are effective inducers, although they exhibit different nuances.
Statistical analysis of the participants' responses showed that both virtual reality videos induced the sublime with similar intensity. However, there were some differences.
For example, nature-based video evokes a greater sense of vastness and a greater perception of existential danger.
Furthermore, while the videos elicited similar emotions, the nature-based video evoked feelings of fear and positive affect that were significantly greater in intensity than those elicited by the art-based video. Participants also reported a greater sense of being present in the nature-based video than in the art-based video..
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The news
Emotional responses to nature and art are equivalent in virtual reality
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
Muchas personas retrasan el momento de abandonar el tabaco por miedo al estrés. Un gran error.