- December 8, 2024

- December 7, 2024

December 8, 2024

- Cold Moon 2024: How to watch the year's final full moon rise with Jupiter this week

- Mysterious fast radio bursts could be caused by asteroids slamming into dead stars

- Scientists reveal genes that make cats orange

- 'It explains why our ability to focus has gone to hell': Screens are assaulting our Stone Age brains with more information than we can handle

- Did Venus ever have oceans to support life, or was it 'born hot'?

- Space photo of the week: Astronaut spots 2 nearby galaxies from SpaceX capsule

- What does a weather report of 30% chance of rain mean?

- Solar system quiz: How well do you know our cosmic neighborhood?

THE MOON

NEWS | JAMIE CARTER | DEC 8, 2024, 3:00 PM EST | VIEW ON LIVESCIENCE

Cold Moon 2024: How to watch the year's final full moon rise with Jupiter this week

The Cold Moon — the 12th and final full moon of 2024 — will rise on Dec. 15 and ascend higher into the night sky than any other, to sit alongside the planet Jupiter.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

(Image credit: Martin Ruegner via Getty Images)

As the final full moon of both 2024 and fall, the rise of the Cold Moon will provide a spectacular, if frosty, finale to the celestial calendar.

Officially full at 4:01 a.m. EST on Sunday (Dec. 15), the full moon will be best seen rising in the east later that day at the time of moonrise where you are. It will be in the constellation Taurus, surrounded by some of the night sky's brightest stars and the planet Jupiter.

Although it can easily be seen with the naked eye, a pair of binoculars or a small beginners' telescope will give you a terrific close-up of the orangey lunar surface as it appears above the eastern horizon.

The Cold Moon is so named because it rises just a week before the December solstice, the longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, which signals the beginning of astronomical winter. It's also known as the Long Nights Moon and the Moon Before Yule, referring to a Pagan festival coinciding with the solstice.

Related: Geminid meteor shower 2024: How to see the year's last big display of 'shooting stars' before it's too late

While the name Cold Moon comes from Mohawk culture, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac, other Native American names include Drift Clearing Moon, Hoar Frost Moon, Snow Moon and Winter Maker Moon. According to Timeanddate, the Cold Moon and Oak Moon are also names from Celtic culture that refer to December's full moon.

Since the moon will be opposite the sun, the moon will mirror the sun's movements. When the sun is at its lowest point in the daytime southern sky, as seen from the Northern Hemisphere, the Cold Moon will be at its highest.

On the night of the full moon, our natural satellite will shine below Capella in the constellation Auriga and above Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion, with Jupiter to its right. The largest planet will be clearly visible all month long in the night sky.

The Cold Moon also rises near the peak of the Geminid meteor shower, one of the year’s most prolific displays of “shooting stars.” Unfortunately, the bright moon’s glare will make it harder to spot as many meteors as usual.

The next full moon after the Cold Moon will be the Wolf Moon, which will turn full on Jan. 13, 2025.

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/space/the-moon/cold-moon-2024-when-the-final-full-moon-of-the-year-will-glow-with-jupiter.

SPACE

NEWS | ROBERT LEA | DEC 8, 2024, 12:00 PM EST | VIEW ON LIVESCIENCE

Mysterious fast radio bursts could be caused by asteroids slamming into dead stars

An asteroid hitting a neutron star could release enough energy to power humanity for 100 million years, more than enough to explain fast radio bursts.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

An illustration shows mysterious fast radio bursts as they bombard Earth from deep space. (Image credit: Jingchuan Yu, Beijing Planetarium)

Scientists have discovered that mysterious blasts of energy called fast radio bursts (FRBs) may be created when asteroids slam into ultradense extreme dead stars called neutron stars. Such a collision releases enough energy to supply humanity's power needs for 100 million years!

FRBs are transient pulses of radio waves that can last from a fraction of a millisecond to a few seconds. In this period, an FRB can release the same amount of energy that it would take the sun several days to radiate.

The first FRB was observed in 2007, and since then, these blasts of energy have maintained their aura of mystery because they were infrequently detected until 2017. That was the year when the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) came online and began making frequent FRB discoveries.

"FRBs so far defy explanation, with over 50 potential hypotheses of where they come from - we counted!" team leader and University of Toronto scientist Dang Pham told Space.com.

The possible connection between FRBs and asteroids, as well as comets slamming into neutron stars, has been suggested before. This new research by Pham and colleagues further solidifies that link.

"It's been known for many years that asteroids and comets impacting neutron stars can cause FRB-like signals, but until now, it was unclear if this happened often enough across the universe to explain the rate at which we observe FRBs occurring," Pham said. "We have shown that interstellar objects (ISOs), an understudied class of asteroids and comets thought to be present between stars in galaxies throughout the universe, could be numerous enough that their impacts with neutron stars could explain FRBs!"

Pham added that the team's research also showed other expected properties of these impacts match up with observations of FRBs such as their durations, energies, and the rate at which they occur over the lifetime of the universe.

The question is: Even though asteroid impacts can be devastating (just ask the dinosaurs), how could they possibly release the same amount of energy that a star takes days to radiate?

Extreme stars mean extreme explosions

Neutron stars are created when massive stars die and their cores collapse, creating dense bodies with the mass of the sun, only crammed into a width no larger than the average city on Earth.

The result is a stellar remnant with extreme properties, such as the densest matter in the known universe (one teaspoon would weigh 10 million tons if brought to Earth) and magnetic fields that are the strongest in the universe, trillions of times more powerful than Earth's magnetosphere.

"Neutron stars are extreme places, with over the mass of the sun squeezed into a sphere about 12 miles (20 km) across, giving them some of the strongest gravitational and magnetic fields in the universe," team member and Oxford University astrophysicist Matthew Hopkins told Space.com. "This means that a huge amount of potential energy is released when an asteroid or comet drops onto one, in the form of a flash of radio waves bright enough to be seen across the universe."

So, how much energy are we talking about here? To consider this, let's swap out an asteroid for something a touch sweeter.

If that ordinary marshmellow reaches the neutron star in the distance it willl stike with the same energy released when thousands of atomic bombs are detonated. (Image credit: Robert Lea (created with Canva))

According to NASA's Goddard Flight Center, if a normal-sized marshmallow were dropped to the surface of a neutron star, the gravitational influence of the dead star is so great that the treat would accelerate to speeds of millions of miles per hour. That means when the marshmallow hits the neutron star, the collision releases the energy equivalent to the simultaneous explosion of a thousand hydrogen bombs!

Exactly how much energy the asteroid/neutron star smash-up releases depends on several factors.

"The energy released depends on the size of the asteroid and the strength of the magnetic field on the neutron star, both of which can vary by a lot, by several orders of magnitude," Hopkins added. "For an asteroid 0.62 miles (1 km) across and a neutron star with a surface magnetic field strength over one trillion times the Earth's magnetic field strength, we calculate the energy released to be about 10^29 Joules (that's 10 followed by 28 zeroes).

"This is a huge number, about one hundred million times all the energy used by all of humanity over a year!"

Clearly, asteroids slamming into neutron stars can release enough energy to explain FRBs, but are these collisions frequent enough to account for FRB observations?

Could asteroid 'combo attack' neutron stars to create repeat FRBs?

Astronomers have detected FRBs from all over the sky, with some scientists estimating that 10,000 FRBs could occur at random points in the sky over Earth each day. If this team is right, that's a lot of collisions between neutron stars and asteroids.

Interstellar rocks are certainly abundant enough in the Milky Way to account for this rate; there are about 10^27 (10 followed by 26 zeroes) in our galaxy alone. But how often do these encounter a neutron star?

"The collision between one neutron star and an interstellar object is rare. We estimate it to be about one collision every 10 million years in the Milky Way," Pham said. "However, there are many neutron stars in the galaxy, and there are many galaxies! Taken together, we find that the neutron star-interstellar objects collision-rate in the universe is comparable with currently observed FRB rates."

Additionally, the researcher pointed out that the number of neutron stars and interstellar objects increases over the lifetime of the universe. That means the rate of neutron stars and interstellar object collisions should also increase over cosmic time.

"If this model is true, then we should observe FRB rates increase as the universe ages," Pham said. "This remains an open research question that could benefit from more observations!"

This image shows the location of fast radio bursts across the night sky. (Image credit: NRAO Outreach/T. Jarrett (IPAC/Caltech); B. Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF)

Even if this theory is correct, it doesn't answer everything about FRBs. That is mainly because there are two types of these energetic blasts of radiowaves.

Thus far, we have been talking about single-occurrence FRBs. However, there are also repeating FRBs that fire off more than once. Could asteroid incursions also explain repeat FRBs?

"We find that this model cannot account for repeating FRBs because a neutron star colliding with an interstellar rock is a rare, random event," Hopkins explained. "It is rare for an individual neutron star to collide with an interstellar object. In comparison, repeating FRBs generally occur at a much faster rate, with some observed to be as fast as two bursts per hour!"

Prior research has suggested that if a single-occurrence FRB is caused by collisions between a neutron star and an asteroid, then repeating FRBs could represent these dead stars colliding with an asteroid belt, like the one in our solar system between Mars and Jupiter.

"There are still some debates around this idea, specifically on how dense these debris fields must be. This scenario is beyond what we considered in our model, which is neutron stars colliding with interstellar objects," Pham said. "Further observations are needed to understand the emission mechanisms of FRBs and their sources."

Pham and Hopkins pointed out that the neutron star-interstellar object collision rates will depend on the kinds of galaxies, such as elliptical or spiral galaxies, in which they occur. That means astronomers will need to observe more FRBs and track them back to host galaxies to determine what type of galaxies are most associated with these blasts of energy.

"Understanding the evolution of FRB rates over cosmic time can also help us understand more about this model," Pham added. "More FRB observations could also place more constraints on how energetic these events are, which will inform us about how FRBs are emitted." The research team told Space.com this will be done with FRB observational projects, such as CHIME, the Canadian Hydrogen Observatory and Radio-transient Detector (CHORD), and the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP).

"Additional works to constrain how populated galaxies are with interstellar objects will also give us better information on how often neutron stars can collide with these objects in the universe," Pham concluded.

The team's results have been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. A preprint version of the team's paper is available on the repository site arXiv.

Originally posted on Space.com.

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/space/mysterious-fast-radio-bursts-could-be-caused-by-asteroids-slamming-into-dead-stars.

GENETICS

NEWS | LLUÍS MONTOLIU | DEC 8, 2024, 9:00 AM EST | VIEW ON LIVESCIENCE

Scientists reveal genes that make cats orange

Two new studies have revealed why some cats are orange — an enduring enigma of genetics, until now.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

(Image credit: Eliz A via Shutterstock)

Garfield, star of the eponymous comic strip created by Jim Davis in 1978, is, like many of the cats that roam our homes, orange. He is orange in the same way that some people are redheaded, some horses are brown, or some dogs are Irish setters, but there is one important difference.

For all other animals, including redheaded humans, we know what causes this characteristic color, but surprisingly, we didn't know what causes it in cats — and felines in general — until now.

Two papers have just been published on bioRxiv — one of the most popular pre-publication repositories of unreviewed articles — that explain the genetics behind orange cats. One comes from Greg Barsh's lab at Stanford University, California. The other is from Hiroyuki Sasaki's lab at Kyushu University, Japan.

Eumelanin and feomelanin: the two mammal pigments

Mammals have only two pigments, which are two colors of melanin: eumelanin (dark brown, blackish) and pheomelanin (yellowish, reddish or orange). Redheads only produce pheomelanin, while dark-skinned people accumulate mainly eumelanin. All other skin and hair colors fall somewhere in between, thanks to as many as 700 genes that regulate pigmentation in animals.

In primates, horses, rodents, dogs, cows and many other animals, melanin production and the decision to produce eumelanin or pheomelanin is in the hands of a membrane protein called MC1R. This controls the skin cells known as melanocytes that release melanin. If a melanocyte-stimulating hormone (alpha-MSH) is released, melanocytes start producing eumelanin. If an antagonist, such as agouti-signaling protein or beta-defensin in dogs, comes into play, the production of dark eumelanin stops, and melanocytes produce orange pheomelanin instead.

Three-colour pigmentation patterns in calico cats. (Image credit: Diagram created by Lluis Montoliu)

However, cats are another matter altogether. Anyone who keeps a cat around the house knows that they are very peculiar animals, very special in every way, and this extends to their pigmentation.

Related: Over 40% of pet cats play fetch — but scientists aren't quite sure why

In cats, eumelanin or pheomelanin production is not controlled by the MC1R receptor. Instead, it is in the hands of a locus (whose gene was, until now, unknown) called "orange". A locus is a physical location in the genome whose effects are known (e. g. black or orange coat), but not the details of the precise DNA sequence it contains, nor the gene to which it belongs.

For this reason, we usually first identify the locus and then, over time, we discover and describe the associated gene in detail. The orange locus in cats can come in two versions: an 'O' variant that supports the production of pheomelanin (orange), and an 'o' variant that is responsible for producing eumelanin (black).

One detail to note is that the orange locus is on the X chromosome. Female cats are XX and male cats are XY, like all other mammals. And as with all female mammals, all cells throughout development will randomly inactivate one of the two copies of the X chromosome. Oo female cats — carrying the O variant on one X chromosome and the o variant on the other — will generate areas of their body that are orange (in areas where they have inactivated the 'o' allele) and others that are black (when inactivating the 'O' allele).

This means that when we see a bicolor (black/orange) or tricolor (black/orange/white) cat, or one of its more diluted versions, we know that it must be a female, and its pigmentation pattern will be completely unique.

Male cats are either orange or black (they have only one X chromosome), but cannot be bicolored or tricolored, unless they carry a chromosomal alteration equivalent to Klinefelter's syndrome in humans (where males are born with an extra X chromosome).

Calico cats

Females can therefore have the unique mosaic patterns so prized by cat lovers. When coinciding with another mutation that affects the proliferation and differentiation of melanocytes (producing white patches, without pigmentation), this generates a tricolor cat, commonly known as a calico.

Each calico is unique, as the inactivation of one of the X chromosomes in each pigment cell occurs randomly during development. The earlier this inactivation occurs during development, the larger the resulting spot. The later it occurs, the smaller the spots.

The feline orange coat gene

Until now, we did not know which gene was hidden behind the orange locus in felines. Barsh and Sasaki's recent work has identified that it is not the cat homologue of MC1R, but a different one: the Arhgap36 gene. Male cats with orange coats, as well as the orange spots of calico cats, carry a mutation in this gene that blocks the production of eumelanin and allows the production of pheomelanin.

These two studies are a wonderful example of good, basic, solid research, which only aims to satisfy scientific curiosity without knowing its immediate applications, and to understand, in this case, why that naughty cat Garfield is orange.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/health/genetics/scientists-reveal-genes-that-make-cats-orange.

TECH

NEWS | RICHARD E. CYTOWIC | DEC 8, 2024, 8:00 AM EST | VIEW ON LIVESCIENCE

'It explains why our ability to focus has gone to hell': Screens are assaulting our Stone Age brains with more information than we can handle

Modern technology has fundamentally changed how our ancient minds work.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

(Image credit: Bevan Goldswain via Getty Images)

We often joke that our attention spans have dropped significantly in recent years with the rise of digital technologies and screen-centric entertainment, but there is sound science to back up this observation. In fact, a shorter attention span is simply one side effect of a recent explosion of screen distractions, as neurologist and author Richard E. Cytowic argues in his new book, "Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age: Coping with Digital Distraction and Sensory Overload" (MIT Press, 2024).

In his book, Cytowic discusses how the human brain has not changed significantly since the Stone Age, which leaves us poorly equipped to handle the influence and allure of modern technologies — particularly those propagated by big tech companies. In this excerpt, Cytowic highlights how our brains struggle to keep up with the lightning-fast pace at which modern technology, culture and society are changing.

From an engineering perspective, the brain has fixed energy limits that dictate how much work it can handle at a given time. Feeling overloaded leads to stress. Stress leads to distraction. Distraction then leads to error. The obvious solutions are either to staunch the incoming stream or alleviate the stress.

Hans Selye, the Hungarian endocrinologist who developed the concept of stress, said that stress "is not what happens to you, but how you react to it." The trait that allows us to handle stress successfully is resilience. Resilience is a welcome trait to have because all demands that pull you away from homeostasis (the biological tendency in all organisms to maintain a stable internal milieu) lead to stress.

Screen distractions are a prime candidate for disturbing homeostatic equilibrium. Long before the advent of personal computers and the internet, Alvin Toffler popularized the term “information overload” in his 1970 bestseller, Future Shock. He promoted the bleak idea of eventual human dependence on technology. By 2011, before most people had smartphones, Americans took in five times as much information on a typical day as they had twenty-five years earlier. And now even today’s digital natives complain how stressed their constantly present tech is making them.

Visual overload is more likely a problem than auditory overload because today, eye-to-brain connections anatomically outnumber ear-to-brain connections by about a factor of three. Auditory perception mattered more to our earliest ancestors, but vision gradually took prominence. It could bring what-if scenarios to mind. Vision also prioritized simultaneous input over sequential ones, meaning that there is always a delay from the time sound waves hit your eardrums before the brain can understand what you are hearing. Vision’s simultaneous input means that the only lag in grasping it is the one-tenth second it takes to travel from the retina to the primary visual cortex, V1.

Smartphones easily win out over conventional telephones for anatomical, physiological, and evolutionary reasons. The limit to what I call digital screen input is how much the lens in each eye can transfer information to the retina, the lateral geniculate, and thence to V1, the primary visual cortex. The modern quandary into which we have engineered ourselves hinges on flux, the flow of radiant energy that bombards our senses from far and near. For eons, the only flux human sense receptors had to transform into perception involved sights, sounds, and tastes from the natural world. From that time to the present we have been able to detect only the tiniest sliver of the total electromagnetic radiation that instruments tell us is objectively there. Cosmic particles, radio waves, and cellphone signals pass through us unnoticed because we lack the biological sensors to detect them. But we are sensitive, and highly so, to the manufactured flux that started in the twentieth century and lies on top of the natural background flux.

Our self-created digital glut hits us incessantly, and we cannot help but notice and be distracted by it. Smartphone storage is measured in tens of gigabytes and the hard drive of a computer in terabytes (1,000 gigabytes), while data volumes are calculated in petabytes (1,000 terabytes), zettabytes (1,000,000,000,000 gigabytes), and beyond. Yet humans still have the same physical brain as our Stone Age ancestors. True, our physical biology is amazingly adaptive, and we inhabit every niche on the planet. But it cannot possibly keep up with the breathtaking speed at which modern technology, culture, and society are changing. Attention spans figure prominently in debates about how much screen exposure we can handle, but no one considers the energy cost involved.

A much-cited study conducted by Microsoft Research Canada claims that attention spans have dwindled to below eight seconds — less than that of a goldfish — and this supposedly explains why our ability to focus has gone to hell. But that study has shortcomings, and “attention span” is a colloquial term rather than a scientific one. After all, some people’s Stone Age brains have the capacity to compose a symphony, monitor the data stream from a nuclear reactor or the space station, or work out heretofore unsolvable problems in mathematics. Individual differences exist in the capacity and ability to cope with stressful events. To give California its due, Gloria Mark at the University of California, Irvine, and her colleagues at Microsoft measured attention spans in everyday environments. In 2004, people averaged 150 seconds before switching from one screen to another. By 2012 that time had fallen to 47 seconds. Other studies have replicated these results. We are determined to be interrupted, says Mark, if not by others, then by ourselves. The drain on our switching is "like having a gas tank that leaks." She found that a simple chart or digital timer that prompts people to take periodic breaks helps a lot.

Neuroscience distinguishes sustained attention, selective attention, and alternating attention. Sustained attention is the ability to focus on something for an extended period. Selective attention speaks to the aptitude for filtering out competing distractions to stick with the task at hand. Alternating attention is the capacity to switch from one task to another and back again to where you left off. In terms of the energy cost incurred by repeatedly shifting attention throughout the day, I fear we have hit the brain’s Stone Age limit. Exceeding it results in foggy thinking, reduced focus, thought blocking, memory lapse or precision calipers, any tool quickly comes to feel like an extension of oneself. The same applies to smart devices. Two centuries ago when the first steam locomotives reached a blistering speed of thirty miles per hour, alarmists warned that the human body could not withstand such speeds. Since then ever-faster cars, communication methods, jet planes, and electronics have diffused into the culture and become absorbed into daily life. In earlier times fewer new technologies appeared per decade, fewer people were alive, and society was much less connected than it is today.

By contrast, the invention, proliferation, and evolution of digital technology have put the status quo in constant flux. Unlike analog counterparts such as a landline telephone or a turntable, smart devices repeatedly demand and command our attention. We have conditioned ourselves to respond to texts and incoming calls the moment they arrive. Admittedly, sometimes jobs and livelihoods do depend on an immediate response. Yet we pay a price in terms of energy cost incurred by constantly shifting and refocusing attention.

Disclaimer

This excerpt has been edited for style and length. Reprinted with permission from "Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age: Coping with Digital Distraction and Sensory Overload" by Richard E. Cytowic, published by MIT Press. All rights reserved.

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/technology/it-explains-why-our-ability-to-focus-has-gone-to-hell-screens-are-assaulting-our-stone-age-brains-with-more-information-than-we-can-handle.

PLANETS

NEWS | ROBERT LEA | DEC 8, 2024, 7:00 AM EST | VIEW ON LIVESCIENCE

Did Venus ever have oceans to support life, or was it 'born hot'?

"We would have loved to find that Venus was once a planet much closer to our own, so it’s kind of sad in a way to find out that it wasn't."

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

An image of Venus's surface created using data from the Pioneer, Venera, and Magellan missions. (Image credit: NASA/JPL)

Scientists have poured cold water on the idea that Venus could once have supported life. The disappointing revelation emerged from the fact it appears water oceans could never have existed on the surface of our neighboring planet.

Venus is often referred to as Earth's "evil twin" because, despite it being a virtual hellscape today, it is believed that our neighbor was much more like our planet in its ancient past.

This new research suggests that Venus was always a hellish planet, and despite its similar mass and distance from the sun to Earth, it was never a twin to our planet in other respects.

The findings are the work of a team of scientists from the University of Cambridge. They arrived at their conclusions by examining the chemical composition of the Venusian atmosphere.

The team's research, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, could have implications beyond the solar system. The findings could assist astronomers in selecting extrasolar planets or "exoplanets" most likely to be habitable.

"Even though it’s the closest planet to us, Venus is important for exoplanet science because it gives us a unique opportunity to explore a planet that evolved very differently to ours, right at the edge of the habitable zone," team leader Tereza Constantinou, a PhD student at Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, said in a statement.

Alternative history Venus

Currently, Venus has a scorching hot surface temperature of around 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees Celsius), hot enough to melt lead.

If that weren't intimidating enough, the second planet from the sun also has clouds of sulfuric acid.

Despite these extreme conditions, many scientists theorize that Venus may have been habitable billions of years ago. Much of the investigation into this question has focused on water, which we understand is the key ingredient for life.

An illustration of Earth next to its evil twin Venus (Image credit: Robert Lea (created with Canva)/NASA)

There are two primary concepts of how Venus could have evolved over the last 4.6 billion years.

One idea suggests that the planet was once cool enough to host liquid water. According to this theory, this situation changed due to a runaway greenhouse effect driven by volcanic activity.

As a result, Venus gradually became hotter and hotter, reaching the point at which it could no longer harbor water in a liquid state.

The other theory suggests that Venus never harbored liquid water because the planet was "born hot." The team's results seem to favor this waterless alternative history.

"Both of those theories are based on climate models, but we wanted to take a different approach based on observations of Venus' current atmospheric chemistry," said Constantinou. "To keep the Venusian atmosphere stable, then any chemicals being removed from the atmosphere should also be getting restored to it, since the planet’s interior and exterior are in constant chemical communication with one another."

The surface of Venus as seen by Magellan (Image credit: NASA/JPL)

In particular, the researchers looked at how rapidly water, carbon dioxide and carbonyl sulfide are destroyed in the Venusian atmosphere and, thus, how quickly they must be replenished from the planet's interior via volcanism.

By carrying material to the surface of planets to its mantle and releasing it as gas, magma driven by volcanism gives a hint at these world's interiors.

Earth's volcanic eruptions are mostly steam because of our world's water-rich interior. The team discovered that Venus's volcanic gases are, on the other hand, no more than 6% steam.

From these dry eruptions, the researchers inferred that Venus's interior is too dry for the planet to have ever had enough water to supply oceans at its surface.

An illustration of the DAVINCI mission's probe dropping through the atmosphere of Venus. (Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)

"We won’t know for sure whether Venus can or did support life until we send probes at the end of this decade," Constantinou said. "But given it likely never had oceans, it is hard to imagine Venus ever having supported Earth-like life, which requires liquid water."

Humanity may not have to wait long to answer this question. NASA's DAVINCI mission is currently expected to launch in June 2029, and it will reach Venus two years later.

Once in situ around the hellish planet, DAVINCI will drop a probe through its atmosphere, collecting vital data. Though the probe isn't designed to survive the descent, there is the chance it could catch a 7-second glimpse of the Venusian surface.

Constantinou explained that if Venus was habitable in the past, it would mean exoplanets that we have already discovered could also be habitable.

"Instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope are best at studying the atmospheres of planets close to their host star, like Venus. But if Venus was never habitable, then it makes Venus-like planets elsewhere less likely candidates for habitable conditions or life," Constantinou said.

"We would have loved to find that Venus was once a planet much closer to our own, so it’s kind of sad in a way to find out that it wasn’t, but ultimately, it’s more useful to focus the search on planets that are mostly likely to be able to support life – at least life as we know it."

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/space/planets/did-venus-ever-have-oceans-to-support-life-or-was-it-born-hot.

SPACE EXPLORATION

NEWS | JAMIE CARTER | DEC 8, 2024, 6:00 AM EST | VIEW ON LIVESCIENCE

Space photo of the week: Astronaut spots 2 nearby galaxies from SpaceX capsule

NASA astronaut Don Pettit imaged the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds as the International Space Station cruised 260 miles above the Pacific Ocean.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

A long-duration photo captures the view of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds from a window on the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft. (Image credit: NASA/Don Pettit)

What it is: The Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud, two dwarf satellite galaxies of the Milky Way

Where it is: 160,000 light-years away, in the constellations Dorado and Mensa (for the Large Magellanic Cloud) and 200,000 light-years away, in the constellations Tucana and Hydrus (for the Small Magellanic Cloud)

When it was shared: Dec. 2, 2024

Why it's so special: Our Milky Way galaxy does not travel through space alone. A spiral galaxy with a disk that spans more than 100,000 light-years, it sits within a neighborhood called the Local Group, which includes more than 50 other galaxies. Some of the neighborhood's less-massive galaxies orbit the Milky Way as satellites.

Two satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud, can be seen in the night sky only from the Southern Hemisphere — or from space. This image was taken by Don Pettit, NASA's oldest active astronaut, at 69 years old. He arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sept. 11, after launching from Kazakhstan in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, along with two Russian cosmonauts.

He took this long-exposure image from a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule docked to the ISS. It was one of three related images published on X by NASA; two featured the Magellanic Clouds, and the other showed the Milky Way.

Called irregular satellite galaxies because of their distorted shapes, the Magellanic Clouds each contain billions of stars. Many incredible astronomical observations have been made there. Perhaps the most famous was in the Large Magellanic Cloud, where in 1987, astronomers spotted the last supernova to be seen with the naked eye.

Last month, astronomers revealed the first high-quality, zoomed-in photo of a star outside our galaxy. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the star, WOH G64, is 1,500 times wider than the sun and on the brink of exploding in a violent supernova.

The Magellanic Clouds are most easily seen between December and April from the Southern Hemisphere.

On his fourth spaceflight, Pettit has been taking long-exposure images and posting them on X, including a star trail, SpaceX Starlink satellites and Las Vegas at night, one of the brightest places on Earth.

For more sublime space images, check out our Space Photo of the Week archives.

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/space-photo-of-the-week-astronaut-spots-2-nearby-galaxies-from-spacex-capsule.

WEATHER

NEWS | HANNAH LOSS | DEC 8, 2024, 5:00 AM EST | VIEW ON LIVESCIENCE

What does a weather report of 30% chance of rain mean?

A percent chance of precipitation shows the probability there will be at least 0.01 inch of rain, snow or sleet at a given location.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

It's best to be prepared if a high percentage of rain is expected. (Image credit: skynesher via Getty Images)

The local weather forecast helps you plan your day. But if you're checking if it's going to rain, for example, you won't usually see a "yes" or "no" in the forecast. Instead, most weather reports give precipitation as a percentage. So what does this "percent" mean?

The percent chance of rain or snow is called the probability of precipitation (POP). This is the probability that there will be at least 0.01 inch (0.25 millimeters) of precipitation at a given location, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). For example, a Tuesday weather report of "30% rain" in Atlanta means there is a 30% chance it will rain at least 0.01 inch in Atlanta on Tuesday.

It does not mean that it will rain 30% of the day, or that 30% of Atlanta will see rain. Nor does it indicate how heavy the rain will be. A brief afternoon thunderstorm could bring more total precipitation than all-day misty drizzle, for example.

"It can really trip you up if you make that misconception," Matt Jeglum, deputy chief of the Science and Technology Infusion Division at the NWS' Western region headquarters, told Live Science.

The point of giving rain and snow forecasts as a percentage is to help people make informed decisions, he said.

Related: Is climate change making the weather worse?

So a 30% POP means you could sneak in an afternoon run without getting wet — or you might get drenched. But if you hate rain, you'll have to decide whether it's worth the risk.

Predicting the POP

The United States began nationwide probability forecasting in 1965. Much of forecasting involved human intuition from studying weather maps, Jeglum said. During the 1970s, statistical models helped develop and expand these forecasts, according to a 1998 article in the journal Weather and Forecasting. Now, the NWS uses an ensemble of 30 weather models to make forecasts, Jeglum said.

These models are like "parallel universes" that start the same but evolve differently, Jeglum said. There may be precipitation in some models and not in others. In the example of a 30% POP, that would mean that there was precipitation — rain, snow or sleet — in three out of the 10 models (parallel universes).

Today's physics-based models are basically equation calculators, Jeglum said. They make their calculations using information on the current temperature, moisture and wind speed.

This data are collected through satellites, radar, ground stations and weather balloons. These balloons are released into the atmosphere twice every day to collect a snapshot of atmospheric conditions, according to the NWS.

That information is fed into servers on the ground, where models use physics and calculus to forecast weather conditions, Michael Souza, a certified consulting meteorologist, told Live Science.

"Whether it's right or wrong, that's for us to decide," Souza said. Meteorologists use a variety of models to make forecasts; there is no one standard around the world, he said. So they must use their own scientific reasoning to determine which model predictions are more accurate. Many times, the models are calibrated — using statistics and, sometimes, artificial intelligence — to ensure that their probability predictions are accurate and not biased by variations between the model's approximations and the actual atmosphere, Jeglum said.

Even with these steps to ensure accuracy, the forecasts often change because of the dynamic nature of the atmosphere. Still, since the 1970s models have provided meteorologists with huge gains in predicting weather multiple days in advance, Jeglum said.

"We have pretty good skill at [answering] 'will it rain or not?' five or seven days out," he said. "Despite the stereotype that meteorologists aren't very good at their job."

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/weather/what-does-a-weather-report-of-30-percent-chance-of-rain-mean.

SPACE

REFERENCES | IAN STOKES | DEC 8, 2024, 3:05 AM EST | VIEW ON LIVESCIENCE

Solar system quiz: How well do you know our cosmic neighborhood?

Test your knowledge on our solar system, from the biggest and smallest planets to the behemoth mountain on Mars.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

How much do you know about our solar system? Take our quiz to find out! (Image credit: rbkomar/Getty Images)

Earth isn't alone in orbiting our sun; it's joined by a bunch of planets, moons, asteroids, and comets that we collectively call our solar system. But how much do you know about our home among the stars?

The solar system is primarily comprised of our sun — which makes up the vast majority of its mass — and the eight planets, which are split into three subcategories. First up are the rocky inner planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars; followed by the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn; then we reach the outmost planets, the ice giants Uranus and Neptune.

Depending on how many rotations around the sun you've seen, you might remember a time when we thought there were nine planets in our solar system. Our order of the solar system mnemonics were forever ruined when poor Pluto was unceremoniously booted out of the planetary club back in… actually, we're not telling you the year, because that's part of the quiz.

Speaking of which, it's time to test your knowledge of our stellar neighborhood with our solar system quiz. If you need a hint, click the yellow button.

More quizzes

—Black hole quiz: How supermassive is your knowledge of the universe?

—Constellations quiz: Can you name all the animals, objects and mythological figures hiding in the night sky?

—Moon landing quiz: How quickly can you name all 12 Apollo astronauts that walked on the moon?

—Equator quiz: Can you name the 13 countries that sit on Earth's central line?

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/space/solar-system-quiz-how-well-do-you-know-our-cosmic-neighborhood.

December 7, 2024

- You're born with most of your neurons — but the brain makes some mysterious new ones in adulthood

- Turuchan pika: The adorable ball of fluff that just loves to play

NEUROSCIENCE

NEWS | ASWATHY AMMOTHUMKANDY, , CHARLES LIU, , MICHAEL A. BONAGUIDI | DEC 7, 2024, 1:30 PM EST | VIEW ON LIVESCIENCE

You're born with most of your neurons — but the brain makes some mysterious new ones in adulthood

Understanding how new neurons affect brain function throughout adulthood can offer new approaches to treating epilepsy and dementia.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Regenerating neurons may be one way to improve cognition. (Image credit: stanislavgusev via Getty Images)

Your brain can still make new neurons when you're an adult. But how does the rare birth of these new neurons contribute to cognitive function?

Neurons are the cells that govern brain function, and you are born with most of the neurons you will ever have during your lifetime. While the brain undergoes most of its development during early life, specific regions of the brain continue to generate new neurons throughout adulthood, although at a much lower rate. Whether this process of neurogenesis actually happens in adults and what function it serves in the brain is still a subject of debate among scientists.

Past research has shown that people with epilepsy or Alzheimer's disease and other dementias develop fewer neurons as adults than people without these conditions. However, whether the absence of new neurons contributes to the cognitive challenges patients with these neurological disorders face is unknown.

We are part of a team of stem cell researchers, neuroscientists, neurologists, neurosurgeons and neuropsychologists. Our newly published research reveals that the new neurons that form in adults' brains are linked to how you learn from listening to other people.

Related: Trigger for deadly neurodegenerative disorder identified

New neurons and learning

Researchers know that new neurons contribute to memory and learning in mice. But in humans, the technical challenges of identifying and analyzing new neurons in adult brains, combined with their rarity, had led scientists to doubt their significance to brain function.

To uncover the relationship between neurogenesis in adults and cognitive function, we studied patients with drug-resistant epilepsy. These patients underwent cognitive assessments prior to and donated brain tissue during surgical procedures to treat their seizures. To see whether how many new neurons a patient had was associated with specific cognitive functions, we looked under the microscope for markers of neurogenesis.

Newborn neurons (green and purple) in brain tissue from human epilepsy patients. (Image credit: Aswathy Ammothumkandy/Bonaguidi Lab/USC Stem Cell, CC BY 4.0)

We found that new neurons in the adult brain are linked to reduced cognitive decline — particularly in verbal learning, or learning by listening to others.

This was very surprising to us. In mice, new neurons are known for their role in helping them learn and navigate new spaces through visual exploration. However, we did not observe a similar connection between new neurons and spatial learning in people.

Improving cognition

Talking with others and remembering those conversations is an integral part of day-to-day life for many people. However, this crucial cognitive function declines with age, and the effects are more severe with neurological disorders. As aging populations grow, the burden of cognitive decline on health care systems worldwide will increase.

Our research suggests that the link between newborn neurons and verbal learning may be foundational to developing treatments to restore cognition in people. Enhancing new neuron generation could be a potential strategy to improve brain health and restore cognition in aging and in people with epilepsy or dementia. But for now, these ideas are just goals and any future treatments are a long way off.

Importantly, our finding that new neurons function differently in mice and in humans emphasizes the critical need to study biological functions like neurogenesis in people whenever possible. This will ensure that research conducted in animal models, such as mice, is relevant to people and can translate to the clinic.

Current drugs for epilepsy primarily aim to reduce seizures, with limited focus on addressing the cognitive decline patients experience. To enhance cognitive outcomes for patients, we started a clinical trial focusing on boosting new neuron production and cognition in epilepsy patients through aerobic exercise. We are currently in the early Phase 1 of the clinical trial, which seeks to establish the safety of the study. Thus far, two patients have successfully and safely finished the study. We plan to recruit eight more patients to exercise and complete this phase.

By bringing together basic science in the lab and clinical research in people, a better understanding of brain regeneration could help support brain health throughout the lifespan.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/health/neuroscience/youre-born-with-most-of-your-neurons-but-the-brain-makes-some-mysterious-new-ones-in-adulthood.

ANIMALS

NEWS | LYDIA SMITH | DEC 7, 2024, 8:00 AM EST | VIEW ON LIVESCIENCE

Turuchan pika: The adorable ball of fluff that just loves to play

Turuchan pikas play all sorts of games, including swinging from branches, throwing food around and hiding them jumping out at each other.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Turuchan pikas live in an isolated region of Siberia, making them difficult to study. (Image credit: Dmitry, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons)

Name: Turuchan pika (Ochotona turuchanensis)

Where it lives: Mountains of central Siberia

What it eats: Plants and vegetation, including nettles

Why it's awesome: Central Siberia may be a harsh and challenging environment, but that doesn't stop the Turuchan pika from having fun. These small, fluffy mammals are known for their love of all types of play — from swinging from branches to chasing each other.

Turuchan pikas are rock-dwelling creatures that live in areas of the Central Siberian Plateau, a mountainous region in central Russia. Because they live in such a specific, isolated region, not much is known about them — but they are thought to be a subspecies of the northern pika (Ochotona hyperborea) found across Northern Asia. They grow up to 7.8 inches (20 centimeters) long and are covered in dense, dark fur, which helps them survive in cold habitats and provides camouflage against predators in the rocky terrain. They have strong hind legs, making them well-adapted for climbing, jumping and, importantly, playing.

Between 2020 and 2021, Russian researchers studied a local population of Turuchan pikas on the Primorsky Mountain Ridge in the Irkutsk region to find out how and why they play. They observed the animals jumping up and grabbing branches with their teeth, as well as swinging from bushes and shrubs and rolling from side to side on their backs.

Related: Cats are better at word association than human babies are, study finds

In one moment documented by the biologists, an adult female and an adult male took turns hiding behind rocks and then jumping out at one another. Others scampered after each other in a game of chase.

The pikas also engaged in an activity researchers nicknamed "jerk-uplifting." They suddenly jumped onto their hind legs, threw their heads back and stretched their front legs forward, often with leaves or lichen in their mouths. It's not known exactly why they did this, but they seemed to be playing with their food before eating it.

Intriguingly, scientists spotted both young and adult Turuchan pikas playing — suggesting it's an activity not just enjoyed by juveniles.

Although wild animals sometimes appear to play while engaging in survival behaviors — like finding food, mating or keeping a lookout for predators — the pikas' games seemed to be purely social. In other words, they played just for fun.

Researchers say this is the first time that any animal from the Lagomorpha order (which includes rabbits and hares) has been observed engaging in all three types of play behavior (locomotor, object and social) in the wild. Locomotor play is when individuals play actively in their environment, object play is when they interact with items like twigs or rocks, and social play is where they play with each other. "The discovered phenomenon undoubtedly requires further research," researchers wrote in the Zoological Journal.

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/animals/turuchan-pika-the-adorable-ball-of-fluff-that-just-loves-to-play.

Table of Contents

Live Science: 2024 Dec 8

December 8, 2024

Cold Moon 2024: How to watch the year's final full moon rise with Jupiter this week

Mysterious fast radio bursts could be caused by asteroids slamming into dead stars

Scientists reveal genes that make cats orange

'It explains why our ability to focus has gone to hell': Screens are assaulting our Stone Age brains with more information than we can handle

Did Venus ever have oceans to support life, or was it 'born hot'?

Space photo of the week: Astronaut spots 2 nearby galaxies from SpaceX capsule

What does a weather report of 30% chance of rain mean?

Solar system quiz: How well do you know our cosmic neighborhood?

December 7, 2024

You're born with most of your neurons — but the brain makes some mysterious new ones in adulthood

Turuchan pika: The adorable ball of fluff that just loves to play