NASA
InSight's First View of Mars with the Cover Off
NASA’s InSight spacecraft flipped open the lens cover on its Instrument Context Camera (ICC) on Nov. 30, 2018, and captured this view of Mars. Located below the deck of the InSight lander, the ICC has a fisheye view, creating a curved horizon. Some clumps of dust are still visible on the camera’s lens. One of the spacecraft’s footpads can be seen in the lower right corner. The seismometer’s tether box is in the upper left corner.
JPL manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission.
USGS
Magnitude 7.0 Earthquake in Alaska
A magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck north of Anchorage, Alaska, on November 30, 2018, at 8:29 a.m. local time (17:29:28 UTC).
U.S. Geological Survey scientists continue to investigate the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that rocked south central Alaska on Friday and are working closely with Alaskan state seismologists and emergency managers. Right now, aftershocks are at the forefront of discussion. USGS scientists know that there will be more aftershocks and some will be larger than others, but the aftershocks will decrease in frequency over time. As of December 2nd, 1:58 UTC, 139 aftershocks of magnitude 3 or above have occurred since the mainshock, including a magnitude 5.7 aftershock at 17:35 UTC on November 30th, just 7 minutes after the magnitude 7.0 mainshock. USGS and other scientists cannot predict the exact time, location, and magnitude of any specific earthquake.
Phys.org
Grim tidings from science on climate change
Scientists monitoring the Earth's climate and environment have delivered a cascade of grim news this year, adding a sense of urgency to UN talks starting next week in Poland on how best to draw down the greenhouse gases that drive global warming.
The 2015 Paris Agreement calls on humanity to block the rise in Earth's temperature at "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) compared to preindustrial levels, and 1.5C if possible.
Black hole 'donuts' are actually 'fountains'
Based on computer simulations and new observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), researchers have found that the rings of gas surrounding active supermassive black holes are not simple donut shapes. Instead, gas expelled from the center interacts with infalling gas to create a dynamic circulation pattern, similar to a water fountain in a city park.
Most galaxies host a supermassive black hole, millions or billions of times as heavy as the Sun, in their centers. Some of these black holes swallow material quite actively. But astronomers have believed that rather than falling directly into the black hole, matter instead builds up around the active black hole forming a donut structure.
Tech Xplore
This new atomic clock is so exact, it could be used to detect dark matter
Scientists have invented a new clock that keeps time more precisely than any that have come before.
The clock is so accurate that it won't gain or lose more than one second in 14 billion years—roughly the age of the cosmos. Its ticking rate is so stable that it varies by only 0.000000000000000032 percent over the course of a single day.
That level of exactitude is not really necessary for those of us who rely on clocks to get us to a doctor's appointment on time, or to know when to meet up with friends.
Popular Science
Cannabis gets its high-inducing power from ancient viruses
There are a variety of reasons why us humans enjoy cannabis, but they typically boil down to one of two things: THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the psychoactive component, that gets you high as a bird; and CBD (cannabidiol), predominantly sought after for its medicinal effects in treating conditions like epilepsy, and potentially other health benefits. As it turns out, you can thank millions of years ago viruses for gifting cannabis the ability to produce these two chemicals.
In the latest issue of Genome Research, a group of North American scientists have, for the first time ever, published a full map of the cannabis genome. Among the myriad of interesting insights to glean from the chart is the finding that the genes that encode for THC and CBD production evolved thanks to bits of DNA introduced by viruses that infected the plant and successfully colonized its genome millions of years ago.
Siberian unicorns lived alongside humans, and they were so much cooler than the mythical version
All rhinos are unicorns, really—they just aren’t pearly white and magical the way our myths say they should be. These powerful beasts get their strength from stocky muscles and keratinized body armor instead of rainbows and magic, but they're the only unicorns we've got. And one extinct species is named accordingly: the Siberian unicorn.
Elasmotherium sibericum was the last remaining survivor of the Elasmotherium genus, which was once a large, diverse group of giant rhinos. Siberian unicorns were once thought to have gone extinct during a broad “background extinction” that occurred during the early and middle Pleistocene, which covers a period from around 126,000 to 2.5 million years ago. The species hadn’t been studied much, but it was previously thought that E. sibericum died out roughly 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
Science Daily
Whales lost their teeth before evolving hair-like baleen in their mouths
Rivaling the evolution of feathers in dinosaurs, one of the most extraordinary transformations in the history of life was the evolution of baleen -- rows of flexible hair-like plates that blue whales, humpbacks and other marine mammals use to filter relatively tiny prey from gulps of ocean water. The unusual structure enables the world's largest creatures to consume several tons of food each day, without ever chewing or biting. Now, Smithsonian scientists have discovered an important intermediary link in the evolution of this innovative feeding strategy: an ancient whale that had neither teeth nor baleen.
In the Nov. 29 issue of the journal Current Biology, scientists at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and colleagues describe for the first time Maiabalaena nesbittae, a whale that lived about 33 million years ago. Using new methods to analyze long-ago discovered fossils housed in the Smithsonian's national collection, the team, which includes scientists at George Mason University, Texas A&M University and the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle, have determined that this toothless, 15-foot whale likely had no baleen, showing a surprising intermediary step between the baleen whales that live today and their toothed ancestors.
Scientists reveal substantial water loss in global landlocked regions
Along with a warming climate and intensified human activities, recent water storage in global landlocked basins has undergone a widespread decline. A new study reveals this decline has aggravated local water stress and caused potential sea level rise.
The study, "Recent Global Decline in Endorheic Basin Water Storage," was carried out by a team of scientists from six countries and appears in the current issue of Nature Geoscience.
"Water resources are extremely limited in the continental hinterlands where streamflow does not reach the ocean. Scientifically, these regions are called endorheic basins," said Jida Wang, a Kansas State University geographer and the study's lead author.
The Guardian
Work on gene-edited babies blatant violation of the law, says China
Chinese authorities have declared the work of He Jiankui, a scientist who claims to have created the world’s first gene-edited babies, a violation of Chinese law and called for the suspension of all related activity.
“The genetically edited infant incident reported by media blatantly violated China’s relevant laws and regulations. It has also violated the ethical bottom line that the academic community adheres to. It is shocking and unacceptable,” Xu Nanping, a vice-minister for science and technology, told the state-owned CCTV on Thursday.
Xu called for the suspension of any scientific or technological activities by those involved in He’s work.
Astronomers measure total starlight emitted over 13.7bn years
All the light from all the stars that have ever existed. It is a quantity of unimaginable magnitude, but now astronomers have put a number on it.
From the earliest, faintest stars, to the largest galaxies, an international team has managed to measure the total amount of starlight emitted over the entire 13.7bn-year history of the universe.
“This has never been done before,” said Marco Ajello, an astrophysicist at the Clemson College of Science in South Carolina and the paper’s lead author.
Trump officials argue climate change warnings based on ‘worst-case scenario'
The Trump administration has a new strategy for deflecting concerns about the warming planet.
Trump officials are minimizing warnings from scientists by arguing they are exaggerated and based on the worst-case scenario. They say the National Climate Assessment (NCA) – an expansive federal government report on the dangers of climate change in the US – considers only the highest possible levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
“If you take the extreme case, you’re right, it’s dire,” Trump’s interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, said on Fox News. “If you take the best case, it’s not much.”
Ars Technica
Soy milk, almond milk, oat milk. Spider milk?
Milk comes from mammals. It’s kind of a distinctly mammalian thing. Even our government knows that. And yet, Chinese scientists have documented jumping spiders that provide their young with droplets of a nutrient-rich fluid from a furrow on the mother’s body. It is the sole nourishment for the spiderlings until they start foraging, and even then they still drink it until they get slightly more mature. Results are reported in Science.
Cockroaches and doves also provide their young with a substance described as “milk,” because it comes from their bodies and provides the exclusive source of sustenance to the young. Cockroach moms deposit this substance into the brood sac where their embryos are developing. […]
Toxeus magnus are the jumping spiders studied here, and they look like ants. Their method of child care also seems to be different from the two examples above. They have a specialized organ that makes the milk, which the researchers suggest is made from unviable eggs that are turned into food for the offspring who survive.
Tariffs on Chinese rare-earth minerals create a sticky problem for US competitors
President Trump's tariffs on rare-earth metals from China should have been a boon to the only US rare-earth minerals mine in California. But a recent Wall Street Journal article illustrates that, given the complex nature of the global economy, those tariffs have actually put the Mountain Pass mine in a tough place.
A hedge fund recently bought Mountain Pass out of bankruptcy after several companies attempted to turn a profit from it. Six months later, the WSJ wrote, Trump announced tariffs that should have helped the mine supply more domestic rare-earths at a higher price.
However, most of the world's rare-earth processing facilities are in China, which also produces more than 90 percent of the world's rare-earth minerals. To develop its metals as cheaply as possible, Mountain Pass has first been shipping its ore to China, where the processed metals are then sold on the world market to makers of smartphones, laptops, and magnets that go into electric car motors and giant wind turbines.
Archaeologists map centuries of history beneath world’s oldest cathedral
The Archbasilica of St. John Lateran doesn’t quite look its age. The basilica, where the Pope presides in his role as Archbishop of Rome, was already ancient when it was rebuilt in the 1650s. Its walls still hold some of the original material used to build the cathedral under Emperor Constantine in 312 CE. And beneath the modern church lies the original Roman foundation. Excavations since the 1700s have opened up a network of dark, cramped spaces called scavi beneath the four-hectare site of the cathedral.
Centuries of Roman history lie buried in the darkness in layers stretching down to 8.5 meters (27.89 feet) below the modern floor of the cathedral, and the subterranean archaeological sites are like a honeycomb through the city’s Caelian Hill. Now, using a combination of laser scanning and ground-penetrating radar, archeologists have made a complete map of the site.
Gizmodo
The Current Ebola Outbreak in Africa has Become the Second Largest in History
The ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has reached an especially tragic milestone. According to the World Health Organization, the outbreak is now the second-largest recorded in Ebola’s 42-year-long known history.
On Thursday, the WHO reported that there have been 426 confirmed or probable cases of the viral disease in the DRC since July, with 245 confirmed or probable deaths as as a result. The vast majority of cases have been located in the North Kivu province along the eastern region of the DRC, but there have also been 19 confirmed cases spotted in the Ituri province just north of North Kivu as well.
The toll of the current outbreak is a distant second to the current record set during an widespread epidemic of Ebola that occurred from 2014 to 2016. That outbreak saw nearly 30,000 cases and more than 10,000 deaths, primarily around West Africa. But the potential for things to get worse is looming.
The Human Origin Story Has Changed Again, Thanks to New Discovery in Algeria
The discovery of 2.4-million-year-old stone tools and butchered bones at a site in Algeria suggests our distant hominin relatives spread into the northern regions of Africa far earlier than archaeologists assumed. The find adds credence to the newly emerging suggestion that ancient hominins lived—and evolved—outside a supposed Garden of Eden in East Africa.
This extraordinary discovery can be traced back to 2006, when Mohamed Sahnouni, the lead author of the new study and an archaeologist at Spain’s National Research Center for Human Evolution, found some intriguing artifacts at a site called Ain Boucherit in northeastern Algeria near the city of El-Eulma. These items were embedded in a sedimentary layer exposed by a deep ravine. Two years later, Sahnouni found another layer at the site, one even older. From 2009 until 2016, his team meticulously worked at Ain Boucherit, uncovering a trove of stone tools and butchered animal remains.