Trudy Myers's Blog, page 4
May 2, 2025
What Existed Before The Big Bang
Our universe began withThe Big Bang. But what existed before the Big Bang?
From the University ofTexas at Austin, researchers propose that dark matter might have been createdduring a brief, explosive period of expansion called “Cosmic Inflation,” whichoccurred just before the Big Bang. The universe, at that point, would haveconsisted of mostly dark matter, completely undetectable to our eyes.
Scientists believe thatdark matter makes up roughly 85% of all matter. This study suggests that thesubstance existed before the event that many consider the beginning of time.
The model for the studyassumes that dark matter is successfully produced during inflation. In mostmodels, anything that is created during inflation is thinned away by theexpansion of the universe until there is essentially nothing left.
The research introducesa mechanism called WIFI (Warm Inflation Freeze-In), which suggests that darkmatter could have been generated during the universe’s earliest moments throughrare interactions within an incredibly hot and energetic environment.
Cosmologists understandthe universe’s beginning was more complex than a simple explosive moment.Before the Big Bang, matter and energy were compressed into an incredibly densestate that physicists struggle to describe. A fraction of a second of rapidexpansion preceded the Big Bang, setting the stage for everything that wouldfollow.
In this new model, thequantum field driving inflation loses some energy to radiation, which thenproduces dark matter particles through a process called ‘freeze-in’. Accordingto this research, all the dark matter that exists today could have been createdduring that brief inflationary period.
The study focused onthe production of dark matter, but WIFI suggests the production of otherparticles that could play a role in the early universe’s evolution.
Although currentlyunconfirmable through direct observation, the theory opens exciting new avenuesfor exploring the universe’s fundamental building blocks. The researchers areoptimistic that upcoming experiments studying the Cosmic Microwave Backgroundand large sale universal structures could provide validation.
April 24, 2025
Life on Mars?
Do you believe therewas past life on Mars? Here’s what new NASA evidence indicates.
Dry, cold and barren.Mars doesn’t seem like a haven for life—at least not the kind humans arefamiliar with.
Scientists havewondered for decades if microbial life could have inhabited Mars in the distantpast. One study, based on data collected by NASA’s Curiosity rover, is peelingback a layer of the mystery. Researchers measured the isotopic composition ofcarbon-rich minerals found in Gale Crater. This region is laced with driedrivers and gullies and was explored by the rover.
The findings Curiositysent to Earth were not optimistic about the potential for life above ground.But that doesn’t rule out the possibility of an underground biosphere or even asurface biosphere that began and ended before the carbonates were formed.
This suggests twopossible ways carbon-rich minerals could have form at Gale crater: a series ofalternating wet and dry periods or salty-ice conditions. These two climatescenarios could be called ‘bleak’ and ‘bleaker’ when it comes to supportinglife.
In an environment thatswings from wet to dry, the region would shift from more habitable to lesshabitable. In the frigid temperatures near Mars’ equator, that environmentwould be hostile for life because most water would be frozen and inaccessiblefor chemistry or biology. Plus, what water was there was extremely salty, notpleasant for life.
This isn’t the firsttime scientists have theorized these climate scenarios for ancient Mars.Previous computer models have indicated these conditions before, but now theyhave isotopic evidence from Martian rocks.
Scientists have soughtlife on Mars since the first spacecraft touched down there in 1976. Mountingevidence from robotic explorers has shown the Red Planet to have been warmerand wetter, perhaps more than 3 billion years ago.
The Perseverance rover discovereda spotted rock with compelling signs of ancient dead Martian life, but a samplewould need to be shipped to Earth for confirmation. A research team alsoreported evidence of a vast ocean of water below the planet’s surface. OnEarth, where there’s water, there’s often life.
Scientists areinterested in Mars’ carbon-rich rocks because they can hold clues about theenvironment in which they formed, such as the temperature and acidity of thewater, and ingredients in the water and air.
The sampled rocksindicate lots of evaporation, suggesting a climate that could only supporttransient liquid water—that is, ice that melts when temperatures rise and thesurface pressure is right.
The heavy isotopevalues in the rocks are much higher than what’s seen on Earth. They are theheaviest carbon and oxygen isotope values recorded for any Martian materials.Although evaporation can cause oxygen isotope changes on Earth, the changes inthe Martian samples were two to three times greater.
But this doesn’t negatethe possibility of life. Mars has a network of deep caves formed by ancientvolcanic vents. Within the caves could be liquid water, traces of long-deceasedbacteria or fungi, or perhaps even existing microbial life.
Caves can host complexecosystems, including extremophiles that munch on rocks and convert thematerial into energy for life. So, many astrobiologists want to go spelunkingon Mars. Would you like to join them?
April 17, 2025
Lost Temple of Poseidon
After 2,600 years, thelost Temple of Poseidon has been found, and it is even bigger than expected.
It seemed obvious thatthere would be a temple dedicated to Poseidon, the ancient Greek god of water.But the temple was lost for a long time and re-discovered recently. The ruinswere found in Elis, Greece, and identified as the Temple of Poseidon ofSamikon, which was described by the ancient Greek geographer Strabo.Archeologists now say the temple is even larger than they thought.
Scientists had searchedfor the lost temple for over a century in the area’s marshlands and found it in2022. It sits in Samikon in the Peloponnese peninsula. It is hoped thediscovery would shed light on the political and economic importance of the 6thcentury BC amphictyony, which is an association of neighboring states to defenda common religious center. The temple formed the center of the town’s culturaland religious identity.
Excavations in 2023revealed more parts of the temple, indicating the size of the temple was largerthan initial investigations had predicted. The building now measures around 28meters long and over 9 meters wide. It has two interior rooms, a vestibule anda rear hall or shrine. The function of the two rooms is unclear. Some suggestit could be a double temple, where two deities were worshipped. Or one roomcould be a meeting room to discuss important matters.
This Archaic templeconsists of two main rooms. A central row of two columns was found in the firsthall supported a large roof covered with tiles. There may have also beensimilar columns in the second room. The ground plan of the temple is unusual,and archeologists know of no comparable buildings so far.
Research shows therewere two construction phases. In the second half of the 4th or firsthalf of the 3rd century BC, the original temple was remodeled. Aspart of the process, the old roof tiles were applied as a subfloor for the newfloor, where they served as insulation against groundwater and to stabilize thefloor. Where tiles are missing, the ground is damp and muddy. These datescorrespond to pottery found at the site, such as drinking cups and roof tiles.
The excavations arepart of a five-year project. Strabo, an ancient Greek geographer, had suggestedthe temple would be near the coast, in a grove of wild olive trees, withlagoons, coastal marches and swamps. Because of his writings, and technologicaladvancements, researchers found the temple 2,600 years after it was built.
The team wants to findout more about the sanctuary and its dimensions. Are other temple buildings,altars, houses, a processional route or treasuries still hidden under theearth?
April 10, 2025
How Life on Earth Could Have Started
Scientists redid anexperiment and found a new possibility of how life on Earth could have started.
In the 1931 movie“Frankenstein,” Dr Henry Frankenstein howled his triumph as massive bolts oflightning crackled and Frankenstein’s monster stirred on a laboratory table,its pieced-together corpse brought to life by the power of electricity.
Electrical energy mayhave also sparked the beginnings of life on Earth billions of years ago. Earthis around 4.5 billion years old, and the oldest direct fossil evidence ofancient life is stromatolites, microscopic organism preserved in layers known asmicrobial mats. These are about 3.5 billion years old. However, some scientistssuspect life originated even earlier, emerging from accumulated organicmolecules in bodies of water, a mixture sometimes referred to as primordialsoup.
But where did thatorganic material come from? Decades ago, researchers proposed that lightningcaused chemical reactions in the oceans, and spontaneously produced organicmolecules.
New research suggeststhat fizzes of barely visible “microlightning,” generated between chargeddroplets of water mist, could have cooked up amino acids from inorganicmaterials. Amino acids are life’s most basic building blocks and would havebeen the first step forward in the evolution of life.
For amino acids toform, they needed nitrogen atoms that could bond with carbon. Freeing up atomsfrom nitrogen gas requires severing powerful molecular bonds and takes anenormous amount of energy. Even microlightning has enough energy to breakmolecular bonds.
In 1953, chemistsStanley Miller and Harold Urey combined ammonia, methane, hydrogen and waterinside a glass sphere to mimic the atmosphere of ancient Earth. They thenjolted that atmosphere with electricity, producing simple amino acids. Thisexperiment supported the theory that life could emerge from nonlivingmolecules.
Scientists revisitedthe 1953 experiment but directed their attention toward electrical activity ona smaller scale. They looked at electricity exchanged between water dropletsmeasuring between 1 micron and 20 microns in diameter. (The width of a human hairis 100 microns.) The big droplets were positively charged. The little dropletswere negatively charged. When oppositely charged droplets are close together,electrons can jump from the negative charge to the positively charged.
The researchers mixedammonia, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen in a glass bulb, then sprayed thegases with water mist. A high-speed camera captured faint flashes ofmicrolightning in the vapor. When they examined the bulb’s contents, they foundorganic molecules, including the amino acid glycine and uracil, a nucleotidebase in RNA.
For the first time,scientists have seen that little droplets of water emit light and a spark. Andthat spark causes all types of chemical transformations.
Lightning is a dramaticdisplay of electrical power, but it sporadic and unpredictable. Lightning mayhave been too infrequent to produce amino acids in quantities sufficient forlife. Water spray, however, would have been more common than lightning. It ismore likely that mist-generated microlightning constantly zapped amino acidsinto existence from pools and puddles, where the molecules could accumulate andform more complex molecules.
However, questionsremain about life’s origins. An alternative abiogenesis hypothesis proposesthat Earth’s first amino acids were cooked up around hydrothermal vents on theseafloor. Yet another hypothesis suggests that organic molecules didn’toriginate on Earth at all. Rather, they formed in space and were carried hereby comets or fragments of asteroids, a process known as panspermia.
What do you think is alikely explanation?
April 3, 2025
Viking Skeletons
Viking skeletons over1,000 years old buried with a crystal and other treasures.
Archaeologists foundViking skeletons over 1,000 years old buried with a crystal and othertreasures.
Near the village ofAsum in Denmark, people had no idea they were standing on the well-preservedgraves of 50 Viking-era skeletons. Archaeologists happened upon the gravesduring a routine survey in preparation for a construction project.
Normally, they would belucky to find a few teeth in the graves, but here they had entire skeletons.They dated the burial site to the 9th or 10th centuries, more than1,000 years ago.
In addition to theskeletons, they uncovered rare trinkets and treasures buried with the bodies.For example, sone of the jewelry did not originate in Denmark. As thescientists suspected, the graves told them story of people connected tointernational trade routes.
These routes providedavenues to exchanging goods, allowing the wealthy to acquire rare and prizeditems from distant lands. They also helped establish nearby Odense, the thirdlargest city in Denmark.
Some days I regret thatI never had the chance to dig in the dirt and happen across such grislyremains.
March 27, 2025
Message from Mars
Father and daughterdecipher message coming from Mars.
Ken and Keli Chaffin, afather/daughter team from the US, have deciphered a simulated “extraterrestrial”message that was transmitted in May 2023 via a radio signal sent by theEuropean Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. The message was interceptedby three observatories on Earth. It was part of a project which aimed to engagecitizen scientists in decoding an alien message.
The Chaffins realizedthat the message contained a diagram that represented the structures of fiveamino acids, the fundamental building blocks of life. According to specialists,the Chaffins conducted hours-long simulations every day and ultimately organizedthe bits into coherent structures using computer simulations and reversiblecellular automata.
The simulated signalwas received on Earth 16 minutes after it was sent. A worldwide community ofover 5,000 citizen scientists went to work on the raw data and managed toextract the signal within ten days. This extraction of the encrypted messagefrom the raw radio signal showcases the potential of global collaboration
The project, called “ASign in Space”, was initiated by artist Daniela de Paulis in collaboration withthe European Space Agency, the SETI Institute, the Green Bank Observatory inWest Virginia, and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics. It wasconceived to test which methods might be useful for decoding transmissions fromextraterrestrial civilizations.
According to theEuropean Space Agency, the results of the project showed that if humanity everreceives a signal from real extraterrestrials, citizen scientists could play acrucial role in deciphering it. The involvement of so many amateur scientistsand the success of the Chaffins demonstrate the power of collaborative effortsand diverse approaches.
March 21, 2025
Ancient Europeans were Dark
New research finds that most prehistoric Europeans had darkskin, hair, and eyes until about 3,000 years ago.
The genes that cause lighter skin, hair and eyes emergedamong early Europeans only about 14,000 years ago, during the Old Stone Age.But light features appeared only sporadically until relatively recently. If Ihad to guess, I would say that the genes for lighter features are recessive,and a person would have had to get the recessive genes from both mother andfather, which wouldn’t have happened that often.
Lighter skin may have had an evolutionary advantage forEuropeans because it enabled people to synthesize more vitamin D in Europe’sweaker sunlight. But lighter eye color, like blue or green, does not seem tohave any major evolutionary advantages, so its eventual emergence may have beendriven by chance or sexual selection.
Scientists analyzed 348 samples of ancient DNA fromarchaeological sites in 34 countries in Western Europe and Asia. The oldest,from 45,000 years ago, was from western Siberia, and another high-quality DNAsample came from a 9,000-year-old individual from Sweden. But many of the oldersamples were badly degraded, in which case the researchers estimated theirpigmentation using “probabilistic phenotype inference” and the HlrisPlex-Ssystem, which can predict eye, hair, and skin color from an incomplete DNAsample.
Palaeoanthropologists think the first Homo sapiens arrivedpermanently in Europe between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago, which meant theyweren’t far removed from African modern human ancestors. Therefore, earlyEuropeans initially only had genetics for dark skin, hair, and eyes. Thiscoloring relies on hundreds of interconnected genes.
The study showed that the frequency of people dark skin wasstill high in parts of Europe until the Copper Age, about 5,000 years ago. Insome areas, dark skin appeared frequently until even later.
Researchers found that light eyes emerged in Northern andWestern Europe between 14,000 and 4,000 years ago, even though dark hair andskin were still dominant at that time. There were those who bucked the trend;as a 1-year-old boy living in Europe about 17,000 years ago had dark hair andskin, but blue eyes.
The genetic basis for lighter skin seems to have emerged inSweden at about the same time as lighter eyes but initially remained relativelyrare. The research also showed a statistical “spike” in the incidence of lighteyes color at this time, which suggests that blue or green eyes were moreprevalent at that time than earlier or later.
So it looks like the Nazis were wrong. Instead of blondhair and blue eyes proving the owners were “pure”, these traits actually provedthese individuals were descended from “mutants”.
But then, all of us are, because that’s how evolutionworks.
March 13, 2025
A Radio Signal From 15 Billion Miles Away
An aging spacecraftturned on a radio transmitter it hasn’t used in decades.
47-year-old Voyager 1is back in touch with NASA. A technical issue caused a days-long communicationsblackout with the historic mission, which is 15 billion miles away, ininterstellar space. While engineers work to understand what went wrong, Voyageris now using a radio transmitter it hadn’t used since 1981.
Launched in September1977, the NASA team has slowly turned off components to conserve power. Thishas allowed the aging spacecraft to send back science data from time to time.
The probe is thefarthest spacecraft from Earth, now operating beyond the heliosphere, which isthe sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends well beyondPluto’s orbit. Now Voyager’s instruments can directly sample interstellarspace.
The new problem is oneof many the vehicle has faced in recent months, but the Voyager’s team keepsfinding creative solutions.
Occasionally, engineerscommand Voyager 1 to turn on some heaters to warm components that havesustained radiation damage. The heat can help reverse the damage. Messages arerelayed to Voyager from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory through the Deep SpaceNetwork. A system of radio antennas on Earth helps facilitate communicationswith Voyagers 1 and 2, and other spacecraft. When Voyager 1 sends data abouthow it is responding to the commands, it takes about 23 hours for a message totravel one way.
But when a recentcommand to the heater was sent, something triggered the spacecraft’s autonomousfault protection system. If the spacecraft draws more power than it should,this system shuts off non-essential systems. The team discovered the latestissue when it didn’t get the response signal.
Voyager 1 has beenusing its X-band radio transmitter for decades. Its second transmitter, calledthe S-band, hasn’t been used since 1981 because its signal is much fainter. Theteam believes the fault protection system shifted the spacecraft to the S-bandtransmitter, which uses less power.
The team won’t commandVoyager 1 to turn on the X-band transmitter until it figures out what happened,which could take weeks. They want to determine if there are any risks toturning on the X-band. But if the team can get the X-band working again, they mayget some data that reveals what happened.
In the meantime, theydon’t want to rely on the S-band for too long, because its signal is too weak.
You’ve got to give itto NASA, when they build something, they build it to last. Billions of milesfurther than a car would.
March 6, 2025
An Ice Age Infant
By analyzing the DNA ofa baby found in southern Italy, scientists have a striking picture of the youngboy. The poorly developed child lived during the Ice Age about 17,000 yearsago. He likely had curly dark hair, brown skin, and blue eyes.
In 1998, his remainswere discovered in the Grotta delle Mura cave in Monopoli, Puglia. The baby’sbones were carefully covered with rock slabs. With no grave goods, the simpleburial was the only grave in the cave.
The largely intactskeleton revealed the child was about 2.5 feet tall when he died. Recent dentalexamination revealed he was between 8 and 18 months old. Radiocarbon datingstated the remains were 16,910 to 17,320 years old, meaning he lived a fewcenturies after the Last Glacial Maximum, when glaciers covered a quarter ofthe planet’s land, some 20,000 years ago.
Ancient skeletons foundin warm climates are often too degraded for any significant genetic analysis.But the cave was so cool, the boy’s remains were well preserved. Researcherswere able to recover about 75% of the boy’s genome, which is remarkable.
His skin was darkerthan most modern Europeans’, but his pale blue eyes match those of otherwestern European hunter-gatherers. The infant appears to be related to theVillabruna cluster, a group of post Ice Age people who lived up to 14,000 yearsago. This suggests the Villabruna line began in southern Europe well before theend of the Ice Age.
Researchers alsodetermined his cause of death. He had an inherited condition that causes theheart muscle to thicken. This results in fatal congestive heart failure.
Nine accentuated linesmarking the baby’s teeth indicate “physiological stress events” that occurredbefore and after birth. Isotopes in the teeth suggest that his mother stayed inone area during pregnancy and may have been malnourished. His birth was likelydifficult, according to a fracture in the baby’s collarbone.
February 27, 2025
Super-Jupiter Found
The European SpaceAgency’s Gaia spacecraft was surveying the Milky Way and found a planet 12times more massive than Jupiter. This planet, which has been dubbed Gaia-4b, is244 light-years away and orbits a star smaller than our sun.
Gaia also discovered abrown dwarf, which is not quite a planet or a star. The brown dwarf is calledGaia-5b, is 134 light-years from Earth, and also orbits a star smaller than oursun.
The Gaia spacecraft wasrecently retired because it was running out of fuel. Both of the enormouscelestial objects were made official after confirmation from other instruments.These tidbits of information are an intriguing tease about what other data maybe released from the Gaia mission.
According to NASA, thenumber of confirmed exoplanets is over 5,800, with thousands more candidatesunder review. It is estimated that this number is a tiny sampling of planets inspace.
Gais-4b, thesuper-Jupiter, is a relatively cold gas giant that orbits its star once every570 Earth-days. Its star is estimated to be about 2/3 the mass of the sun. Gaia-4bis one of the biggest planets known to circle a small star.
A brown dwarf issometimes referred to as a failed star because it lacks enough mass to generateits own nuclear power. Gaia-5b orbits an even smaller star, about 1/3 of oursun’s mass, in slightly less than an Earth year. Although Gaia-5b didn’t makeit as a star, it’s about 21 times bigger than Jupiter. And Jupiter’s mass isabout equal to 318 Earths.
Gaia-4b is thespacecraft’s first success using the “wobble” technique. Launched in 2013, thespacecraft used a pair of optical telescopes to scan the sky. Because of itsprecision in tracking the motion of stars, it is believed its data may lead tothousands of new discoveries.
The gravity of orbitingplanets can cause host stars to wobble. Planet hunters are adept atinterpreting this data. But confirmation from other telescopes is key, becausethere are other possible reasons for the motion.
