3696 - STARS - largest to the smallest? -

  -  3696  -   STARS  -   largest to the smallest?      From our perspective, the sun looks massive. However, if you zoom out to the far reaches of our galaxy, the sun no longer looks like such a giant.  As far as stars go, our sun dwarfs the rest of the stars in the sky.   But if you zoom out to the far reaches of our galaxy, the sun no longer looks like such a giant. In fact, it's an average in size star.

----------------------------  3696  -  STARS  -   largest to the smallest?    

-   What is the largest known star in the universe?   The answer depends on whether you're talking about mass or the total volume of a star.   The heaviest stars are often unremarkable when it comes to physical size, and the most voluminous stars are often lightweights. That's because as stars get older, they tend to expand and shed mass. 

-

-   The record holder  for largest mass is the star “R136a1“. It's located about 160,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. In diameter, this star is 30 to 40 times the size of our sun, that is more than 200 times more massive. This star is also relatively young, 1 million years old compared with our sun's 4.5 billion years. 

-

-  If the biggest star in the universe is the one with the largest diameter, there are a number of contenders. At the top of that list is “UY Scuti“. This red hypergiant's diameter is roughly 1,700 times that of the sun.

-

-   If the sun were a cherry, UY Scuti would be a 10-story-high sphere. But there's a lot of uncertainty in determining the diameter of very distant stars.  UY Scuti is about 9,500 lightyears from Earth.

-

-   Scientists need to know how much light the star produces, a  figure due to the fact that stars appear dimmer with distance and brighter close up. Add that to the fact that red hypergiants like UY Scuti are often "variable," meaning their brightness flickers and flares over time. 

-

-  Other similarly large stars include “WOH G64“, another red supergiant less than 5 million years of age.  Both located in the Large Magellanic Cloud “VY Canis Majoris” about 8.2 million years old both of which have diameters around 1,500 times that of the sun. 

-

-   If any of these stars replaced our sun at the center of our solar system, they would envelop every inner planet up to and including Jupiter. The Earth, all the inner planets would be vaporized.

-

-  But while our sun may not be the biggest star in the universe, it's certainly not the smallest.   It is medium size.   The smallest known star is “EBLM J0555-57Ab“.  It  is smaller than the planet Saturn and still receives its star designation. At any lower mass, it wouldn't be able to sustain nuclear fusion at its core, and would instead be classified as a “brown dwarf“, a failed star. 

-

-    The universe is vast and these stars are just the ones that lie in our immediate neighborhood. We can't measure the size of stars at the other side of the Milky Way, much less the far reaches of the universe. There's too much dust, there's too much interference with light. And while UY Scuti and EBLM J0555-57Ab approach the upper and lower limits of a star's possible size, we still have no idea how massive, or heavy, stars can get.

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September 27, 2022        STARS  -   largest to the smallest?             3696                                                                                                                                      

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--------------------- ---  Wednesday, September 28, 2022  ---------------------------

3695 - DIAMONDS - how they form on Earth?

  -  3695  -  DIAMONDS  -  how they form on Earth?   Before diamonds can begin growing deep underground in Earth's mantle, they need a little zap from an electric field.  In lab-based experiments, scientists mimicked conditions in the mantle, the layer just beneath Earth's crust, and found that diamonds grew only when exposed to an electric field, even a weak one of about 1 volt.

--------------------------------  star dust  ------------------------------

---------------------  3695  -  DIAMONDS  -  how they form on Earth

-   Diamonds are made of carbon atoms aligned in a particular crystal structure. They form more than 90 miles under Earth's surface, where pressures reach several giga-pascals and temperatures can soar upward of 2,732 degrees Fahrenheit. 

-

-  But many factors behind the "birth" of diamonds prized for its polished beauty and extreme hardness are a mystery.

-

-  Researchers gathered the starting ingredients needed to make a diamond, carbonate and carbonate-silicate powders that are similar to carbonate-rich melts abundant in the mantle. They put these powders in an artificial mantle in their lab and subjected them to pressures of up to 7.5 giga-pascals and temperatures of up to 2,912 F, and electrode-powered electric fields ranging from 0.4 to 1 volt. After varying periods lasting up to 40 hours, diamonds and their softer carbon-based cousin, graphite,  formed, but only when the researchers set up an electric field of about 1 volt.. 

-

-  The diamonds and graphite formed only at the cathode, the negative part of the electric field. This spot provides electrons to jumpstart a chemical process so that certain carbon-oxygen compounds in the carbonates can undergo a series of reactions to become carbon dioxide and, eventually, the carbon atoms that can form a diamond.

-

-  The synthetic diamonds were small, with diameters no larger than 0.007 inches, but they were surprisingly similar to natural diamonds.  They have an octahedral shape and tiny amounts of other elements and compounds, including a relatively high nitrogen content and silicate-carbonate inclusions.

-

-  These experiments suggest that local electrical fields play a pivotal role in diamond formation in Earth's mantle. This local voltage is likely created by rock melts and fluids in the mantle that have high electrical conductivity, but it's unclear how strong these electrical fields are.

-

-  These rare type of diamond may suggest that water can penetrate deeper into Earth's interior than scientists previously thought.   Though more than 70% of our planet is covered with water, there is also water in minerals more than 200 miles underground, including in the upper mantle, the semi malleable layer that the crust "floats" on top of. Scientists have long thought that as the upper mantle transitions into the hotter, denser lower mantle, minerals can hold far less water. 

-

-    Researchers found that a diamond contained inclusions, or tiny bits of other minerals, that can hold more water and seem to have existed on the boundary between the upper and lower mantle. The results suggest that there may be water deeper in the Earth than scientists thought, which could affect our understanding of the deep water cycle and plate tectonics.  

-

-   “Type IaB” diamonds are a rare type of diamond from the Karowe mine in Botswana that form deep underground and are often in the Earth for a long time. To study the diamond, they used "nondestructive" forms of analysis, including Raman micro-spectroscopy, which uses a laser to noninvasively reveal some of a material’s physical properties, and X-ray diffraction to look at the diamond's internal structure without cutting it open. 

-

-   Inside the diamond's inclusions, the researchers found a mineral called “ringwoodite“, which has the same chemical composition as “olivine“, the primary material of the upper mantle but forms under such intense temperature and pressure.

-

-   Ringwoodite is typically found in the transition zone between the upper and lower mantle, between around 255 and 410 miles below Earth's surface and can contain much more water than the minerals “bridgmanite and ferropericlase“, which are thought to dominate the lower mantle. 

-

-  But instead of minerals usually found in the transition zone, surrounding this ringwoodite were forms of minerals typical of the lower mantle. Because the encasing diamond preserved these minerals' properties as they appeared in the deep Earth, the researchers could find the temperatures these the minerals endured and the pressures they were under; they estimated the minerals' depth to be around 410 miles below the surface, near the outer boundary of the transition zone. 

-

-  Analysis further revealed that the ringwoodite was likely in the process of breaking down into more typical lower mantle minerals in a hydrous, or water-saturated, environment, hinting that water might penetrate from the transition zone into the lower mantle. 

-

-  Although previous research has found some forms of minerals from the lower mantle in diamond inclusions, the combination of materials in this inclusion is unique. It was also unclear from prior findings if these minerals hinted at the presence of water-containing minerals in the lower mantle.

-

-   Because no one has directly sampled rock deeper than around 7 miles beneath the planet's surface, diamond inclusions are one of the few sources of minerals from Earth's mantle.  The results could have implications for understanding the deep water cycle, or the cycle of water between the planet's surface and deep interior. 

-

-  The findings also might affect models of plate tectonics.  How water in the mantle might influence processes such as Earth's internal convection current. This current powers plate tectonics by unevenly heating the Earth’s mantle, causing hotter parts to rise and shift the Earth’s plates over millions of years. 

-

September 26, 2022       DIAMONDS  -  how they form on Earth?          3695                                                                                                                                      

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--------------------- ---  Tuesday, September 27, 2022  ---------------------------

3694 - ASTEROID - Ryugu.

 -  3694  - ASTEROID  -  Ryugu.  Situated 300,000,000 kilometers from Earth this asteroid circles the sun every 16 months. It has been described as little more than an assemblage of gravel, likely made from the debris of several other asteroids.  

---------------------  3694  -    ASTEROID  -  Ryugu.

-  In December 2014, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency launched the spacecraft “Hayabusa2” to the asteroid “162173 Ryugu“. In December 2020, the sample-return capsule successfully landed safely back on Earth with pristine pieces of Ryugu that it had collected. Researchers have determined that one specific particle on the asteroid Ryugu can shed light on the unaltered initial materials from its parent body.

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-  Ryugu is an ancient fragment of a larger asteroid that formed very early in solar system history, shortly after the birth of the sun. Samples from this asteroid present a unique opportunity to determine not only the material the solar system formed from, but also how the solar system evolved.

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-  The solar system formed from a large cloud of swirling gas and dust made by previous generations of stars. This "stardust" is nanometer to micrometer sized particles that are incorporated into planetary bodies, like Ryugu, when they form.

-

-  Researchers found that one particle differs mineralogically from other Ryugu particles because it contains a small amount 0.5 volume % of anhydrous silicates. Other particles studied to date contained more phyllosilicate and carbonate minerals, suggesting that Ryugu went through an extensive aqueous alteration on its parent body, similar to the rare mineralogically altered, but chemical primitive CI chondrites which is a group of rare stony meteorites.

-

- They found that some of its dust grains are older than the solar system. 

-

-  The Hayabusa-2 space probe began its mission back in 2014 as it was launched into space aboard a H-IIA 202 rocket. It rendezvoused with the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu four years later. After circling the asteroid for two years, it descended to its surface and grabbed a sample of its surface dust. It then blasted off and made its way back to Earth.

-

-  Ryugu is situated 300,000,000 kilometers from Earth and circles the sun every 16 months. It has been described as little more than an assemblage of gravel, likely made from the debris of several other asteroids.  It likely formed in the outer part of the solar system and has been creeping inward since.  Its dust hints at the possibility of Earth's water coming from a similar asteroid.

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-  Since the sample of dust collected by the probe returned to Earth, parts of it have been passed around the world to different researchers eager to test it in different ways. In this new effort, the researchers looked to determine its age.  They note that different kinds of grains in asteroids such as Ryugu originated from different types of stars and stellar processes. The age of the grains in their dust can be identified and dated by their isotopic signatures.

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-   Researchers compared these samples to grains found in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites that have been found on Earth. Just 5% of such meteorites have been found to harbor grains that predate the creation of the solar system, some of which have been dated to 7 billion years ago.

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-   The dust sample held grains identical to all of the others that have been seen in meteorites, showing that it too predates the solar system. They note that one in particular, a silicate that is known to be very easily destroyed, must have been protected somehow from damage by the sun.

-

September 25, 2022                  ASTEROID  -  Ryugu                       3694                                                                                                                                      

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--------------------- ---  Tuesday, September 27, 2022  ---------------------------

3693 - COSMIC RAYS - mystery under computer simulations?

  -  3693  -  COSMIC  RAYS  -  mystery under computer simulations?    Scientists hope to develop a theoretical model that describes the transition from cosmic rays from our own Galaxy to a fraction coming from distant galaxies and compare it with observations.

--------  3693  -  COSMIC  RAYS  -  mystery under computer simulations?

-  “Ion” is one of the four fundamental states of matter. It contains a significant portion of charged particles ions and/or electrons. Most are free protons or electrons all carrying electric charges.  The presence of these charged particles is what primarily sets plasma apart from the other fundamental states of matter. 

-

-  Plasma is the most abundant form of ordinary matter in the universe, being mostly associated with stars, including the Sun.   It extends to the rarefied intracluster medium and possibly to intergalactic regions. Plasma can be artificially generated by heating a neutral gas or subjecting it to a strong electromagnetic field.

-

-  For decades, scientists have been trying to solve a problem regarding the weather in outer space.   At unpredictable times, high-energy particles bombard the Earth and objects outside the Earth's atmosphere with radiation that can endanger the lives of astronauts and destroy satellites' electronic equipment. These flare-ups can even trigger showers of radiation strong enough to reach passengers in airplanes flying over the North Pole.

-

-   Despite scientists' best efforts, a clear pattern of how and when flare-ups will occur has remained difficult to identify.   Astronomers have used supercomputers to simulate when and how high-energy particles are born in turbulent environments like that on the atmosphere of the sun. 

-

-   NASA's “Parker Solar Probe“, the closest spacecraft to the sun, may be able to validate findings by directly observing the predicted distribution of high-energy particles that are generated in the sun's outer atmosphere.

-

-   Magnetic fields in the outer atmosphere of the sun can accelerate ions and electrons up to velocities close to the speed of light. The sun and other stars' outer atmosphere consist of particles in a plasma state, a highly turbulent state distinct from liquid, gas, and solid states. 

-

-  Computer simulations show the exact movements of electrons and ions in the sun's plasma. These simulations mimic the atmospheric conditions on the sun, and provide the most extensive data gathered to-date on how and when high-energy particles will form.

-

-  In 1949, the physicist Enrico Fermi began to investigate magnetic fields in outer space as a potential source of the high-energy particles (which he called “cosmic rays“) that were observed entering the Earth's atmosphere. Since then, scientists have suspected that the sun's plasma is a major source of these particles.

-

-  The vast majority of the observable matter in the universe is in a plasma state. Understanding how some of the particles that constitute plasma can be accelerated to high-energy levels is an important new research area since energetic particles are routinely observed not just around the sun but also in other environments across the universe, including the surroundings of black holes and neutron stars.

-

-  Computer programs can simulate the transport of cosmic rays through space. The researchers hope it will help them solve the mystery of the sources of cosmic rays.

So far, we do not know which celestial objects emit the high-energy radiation that pelts the Earth from space. 

-

-  Since their discovery 100 years ago, researchers have been attempting to decipher where cosmic rays come from. The problem is that, viewed from Earth, they look like the sky during daytime to the naked eye.

-

-  This is because the light from the sun is scattered in the Earth's atmosphere and spreads evenly across the entire sky. Cosmic rays are also scattered on their way to Earth through interactions with magnetic fields. All we can see from Earth is an evenly illuminated image; the origin of the radiation remains hidden.

-

-  The program “CRPropa” enables astronomers to trace the trajectories of particles from their formation to their arrival on Earth and this for all energies that we can observe from Earth.  It can fully account for the interaction of the particles with matter and photon fields in the universe.

-

-  The program can simulate not only cosmic ray propagation, but also signatures of neutrinos and gamma rays that are produced in cosmic ray interactions.  Unlike cosmic rays, these messenger particles can be observed directly from their sources, as they come to Earth on a straight path.  They can also use the software to predict such signatures from neutrinos and gamma rays from distant galaxies such as starbursts or active galaxies.

-

-  The vast majority of the observable matter in the universe is in a plasma state. Understanding how some of the particles that constitute plasma can be accelerated to high-energy levels is an important new research area since energetic particles are routinely observed not just around the sun but also in other environments across the universe, including the surroundings of black holes and neutron stars.

-

-  Scientists have developed a computer program that can simulate the transport of cosmic rays through space.   So far, we do not know which celestial objects emit the high-energy radiation that pelts the Earth from space.

-

-  Since cosmic rays were discovered 100 years ago, researchers have been attempting to Cosmic rays are also scattered on their way to Earth—through interactions with cosmic magnetic fields the radiation remains hidden.   CRPropa enables scientits to trace the trajectories of particles from their formation to their arrival on Earth—and this for all energies that we can observe from Earth.  They can fully account for the interaction of the particles with matter and photon fields in the universe.

-

-  The program can simulate not only cosmic ray propagation, but also signatures of neutrinos and gamma rays that are produced in cosmic ray interactions. Unlike cosmic rays, these messenger particles can be observed directly from their sources, as they come to Earth on a straight path. We can also use the software to predict such signatures from neutrinos and gamma rays from distant galaxies such as starbursts or active galaxies.

-

-  Scientists hope to develop a theoretical model that describes the transition from cosmic rays from our own Galaxy to a fraction coming from distant galaxies and compare it with observations.

-

September 24, 2022      COSMIC  RAYS  -  mystery under computer simulations?   3693                                                                                                                                     

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--------------------- ---  Monday, September 26, 2022  ---------------------------

2964 - UNIVERSE - How to Explain Our Universe?

-  2964    -  UNIVERSE  -  How to Explain Our Universe?   The purpose of this review is to explain the Universe.  It is a big task, I agree.  It spans over 13,700,000,000 years of time and lightyears of distance.  It is the beginning of space and time and those need to be explained as well.  This is difficult.  The Universe is big and complicated and we do not know what we do not know.  This is one shot at it, contrary opinions are welcome.

---------------------  2964    -  UNIVERSE  -  How to Explain Our Universe?

-  I try to work and solve these big problems.  My wife works on all the other smaller problems, like family, finances and politics.  Astronomy is my domain and my explanations are lacking.

-

-  Let’s start with the town of Santa Rosa that is about 8 miles across.

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-  Multiply by 1,000 and you can view the entire Earth that is about 8,000 miles across.

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-  Multiply, or expand that, by 10,000 and you can view the entire Solar System which about 600,000,000 miles from the Sun to the planet Saturn.

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-  Expand by 1,000,000,000 ( 1 billion ) and you can view our Milky Way Galaxy that is about 6,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles across.  (6*10^18 miles)

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-  Expand beyond our Galaxy by 100 and you can view 4*10^20 miles across the Cluster of Galaxies.

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-  Expand by another 100 and the view is a structure of galaxies with filaments and voids nestled  in a sea of Dark Matter.

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-  Now expand by only a factor of 10 and the entire Observable Universe comes into view, 250,000,000,000,000,000,000,000  miles across.  ( 2.5*10^23 miles)

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-  This uniform sphere of the Observable Universe is itself expanding at 47,000 miles per hour per million lightyears distance.  It is been doing this expansion for 13,700,000,000 years.  This is called “Hubble’s constant of expansion“.  The reciprocal of Hubble’s Constant is the age of the Universe. ( time = distance / velocity  , and,  velocity is the speed of light.)

-

-  Because the Universe has been expanding during the time light has traveled to reach us the actual Universe today is 90 billion lightyears across.  We can only see about 13 billion lightyears from our point of view because that is the light that has reached us. 

-

-   The furthest things we can see are Quasars, or Accretion Disks around Blackholes,  at the center of the earliest galaxies formed after the Big Bang.  These beams of light originally left their galaxy some ½ to 1 billion years after the Big Bang.

-

-  Everything we see in the Universe comes to us in electromagnetic radiation.  (“see” can have several interpretations.  We can also see” with gravity and gravity waves. ).  The electromagnetic spectrum spreads in a frequency range from radio waves to Gamma Rays.  

-

---------------  Wavelengths of the radiation from <0.1 meters to < 10^-11 meters.

-

--------------   Frequencies range from <3*10^9 cycles per second to > 3*10^19 cycles per second.  w*f  =  c , wavelength * frequency  =  speed of light.

-

-------------  Energy  =  Planck’s Constant * frequency ( E  =  h * f ) ranges from <2*10^-24  Joules to > 2*10^-14 Joules.

-

-  A Joule is a unit of energy.  Or, a unit of work that  moves one Newton of force through one meter of distance ( a Newton-meter ).  A Joule is also one watt - second of electrical energy.  It has replaced the calorie as a measure of heat energy.  

-

-  One calorie  =  4.1868 Joules.  One Joule  =  252 calories.  A calorie is the heat energy needed to raise one gram of water one degree Centigrade.  One Joule is also equal to 16,000,000 Ergs of energy.  A Joule is mass * (velocity)^2.  A joule is a kilogram * meter^2 / second^2.

-

-  All the energy in the Universe started at one point in time.  If the Universe rose from nothing there must have been equal amounts of positive energy and negative energy, matter and anti-matter.   

-

-  Since 1929 we call this event the “Big Bang“.  Since then energy has been transformed or converted into many different forms, including matter,  but it can never be created nor destroyed.  It is still the same today as it was in the Big Bang.

-

-  The four forces rose from the Big Bang as well.  It started out as one force then Gravity froze out, then the Strong Nuclear Force, then the Weak Nuclear Force, then the Electromagnetic Force.  This all happened in the first 10^-35 to 10^-12 seconds and temperatures cooling from 10^29 degrees Kelvin to 10^15 degrees Kelvin.

-

-  Because the Universe we see today is uniform in all directions and appears geometrically flat, that is it is not spherical nor saddle shaped, it has to be explained as caused by “Cosmic Inflation“.  

-

-  In 1981 that idea was that the universe went through a brief faster - than - light expansion and therefore explains why it appears uniform and flat.  The ever expanding bubble of space and time slowed down to its present pace and is now accelerating again.  And has been accelerating for the last 5 billion years.

-

-  Like the Sun is one of a billion stars, the Universe could be one of billions of Universes.  We do not know what we do not know.  Also, it appears that everything we do know and can see is only 5% of the “Observable Universe.”  

-

-  A complete mystery exits because gravity and the math of the expansion dictates that there is 95% of the Universe made of Dark Matter and Dark Energy that we can not see and have no concrete clue as to what it is.  It is “Dark” because it does not interact with electromagnetic energy.  It only interacts with Gravity.  We have to learn to communicate with gravity waves the same way we communicate with electromagnetic waves.

-

-  Dark Matter was first observed in 1933 as it affected the rotational velocities of galaxies.  It was confirmed in 1970 as it affected the orbital velocity of stars within a galaxy.  It is most recently confirmed in gravitational lensing and the collision of galaxies.

-

-  Dark Energy was first observed in 1917 as it fell out of Albert Einstein’s equations.  Einstein observed that the Universe was static, not expanding, and invented a “Cosmological Constant of Expansion” to insert in the equations to get the answer he thought he observed. 

-

-   In 1929 Edwin Hubble observed that the Universe was not  static, but it was expanding. The further galaxies were away from us the faster they were receding.  The Cosmological Constant changed signs to allow for expansion.  

-

-  In 1998 it was observed that the Universe was not only expanding it was growing at an every increasing acceleration.  This became explained as the effect of “Dark Energy“.  Science does not have a concrete clue of what this stuff is.  They are just convinced that it does exist in order to explain the space time scenario we observe today. 

-

-   However, there are two sciences involved that we have not been successful in uniting.  Relativity explains the very big stuff and Quantum Mechanics explains the very small stuff.  The two math’s do not overlap,……… yet.

-

-  String Theory is one of the attempted models to get the math to work for everything.  But, it requires 11 dimensions that somehow split apart when you go to 4 dimensions, 3 dimensions plus time.  Einstein’s equations showed that mass and motion warp space and alter the flow of time.  But, our best minds in the 21st Century still can not explain space and time and where it came from.

-

-  The theory for Blackholes requires all the information that flows past the Event Horizon lies at the surface in 2 dimensions and gets projected into the  interior of the Blackhole as 3 dimensions. This would be like a hologram where a 3-D image is projected from a 2-D screen.   Maybe space and time emerge in this way.  Space and time may not be fundamental properties. They may emerge from something else.

-

-  Space and time may be lumpy, or exist as quantum bundles.  There may be a smallest scale beyond which space does not exist.  Max Planck defined this smallest length to be 1.616*10^-35 meters.  He derived this from Newton’s Gravitational Constant (G) , the speed of light “c“, and his own Constant (h).

-

--------------------   (length)^2  =  G * h / 2*pi* c^3       =           1.616 * 10^-35 meters.

-

Then he divided by the smallest time to get Planck length / Planck time = the speed of light.

-

--------------------  (time)^2  =     G * h / 2*pi * c^5         =         10^-43 seconds.

-

-  After all this science over the past 100 years we can not predict whether the Universe will continue to expand, getting thinner and cooler, until it dies as a Big Freeze.  Or, if the expansion decays and gravity becomes dominate reversing the expansion running the Universe backwards into a Big Crunch.  Or, if the vacuum energy continues to expand everywhere in the Universe tearing everything apart into a Big Rip.  Lord only knows.

-

-  We do not know what we do not know.  Opinions are like belly buttons everybody has one.  Contrary opinions are welcome.  As we learn more, things will become clear.  Once we understand it, it will be simple. 

-

January 7, 2021       UNIVERSE  -  How to Explain it?     1268       2964                                                                                                                                                   

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 ---------------------   Sunday, September 25, 2022  -------------------------

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3692 - PHOTONS - Let there be light?

  -  3692  -   PHOTONS  -  Let there be light?   Light travels 182, 282 miles per second.  However, that speed is in a vacuum, light travels through transparent medium at lower speeds.  When a photon hits an object it can be reflected or absorbed.  The transfer of energy from the photon to the object is proportional to its frequency.

---------------------  3692  -     PHOTONS  -  Let there be light?

-  The photon is electromagnetic radiation having wavelengths and frequencies ranging from radio waves to gamma rays.  

-

-  We normally do not think those are photons moving through the air powering your cell phone.  However, it is the photon of electromagnetic energy traveling over the airways that carries your voice conversations.  Those are photons cooking your food in the microwave.  Those are photons from distant stars that are lights in the night sky.

-

-  The photon is massless and only travels at one speed , the speed of light, 186,282 miles per second.  However, that speed is in a vacuum, light travels through transparent medium at lower speeds. 

-

-   Light leaving the core of the Sun takes years to reach the surface.  Once at the surface it takes only 8.3 minutes to reach us.  The space shuttle is fast at 25,000 miles per hour but that is under 7 miles per second.  The frequency of yellow light is 5 * 10^20 cycles per second.  Or, a wavelength of 2*10^-21 seconds per cycle.  

-

-  The eye blinks in 10^-1 seconds.  The camera shutter clicks in 10^-3 seconds.  The microprocessor has a cycle time of 10^-9 seconds.  A laser pulse is 4^-15 seconds.  

-

-  The speed of light is the Universe speed regulator, nothing can go faster than the photon.

-

-  Massless particles MUST only travel at the speed of light.  And, likewise, particles with mass must slow down.  “Mass” becomes energy that has just slowed down enough for us to see it.

-

-  When a photon hits an object it can be reflected or absorbed.  The transfer of energy from the photon to the object is proportional to its frequency.

-

-------------------  A photon’s momentum = 6.6*10^-34 * frequency / 3*10^8.  

-

------------------- Or, 6.6*10^-34 / wavelength.      p = h*f/c          p = h / w.

-

------------------  The Energy in a photon = 6.6*10^-34 * frequency.     E = h*f.  

-

-   So, the higher the frequency of a photon the more Energy it has.  X-rays have more energy than radio waves and blue light has more energy than red light.

-

-  You would think that a massless object would have no momentum.  However, a photon does have momentum because it carries energy and energy is the same as mass. 

-

-----------------------E = mc^2.   Energy = 9*10^16 * mass. 

-

---------------------- Or, mass = Energy * .11*10^-16. 

-

---------------------- Energy = momentum * velocity.  

-

-----------------------  E = m*v^2.

-

-  Photons have both wave-like and particle-like behavior.   Or, better said, they have wave-like particle and particle-like wave behavior.  

-

-  Albert Einstein in 1905 first proposed that light, and therefore all electromagnetic radiation, comes in quanta, or bundles of energy, called “photons“.  Photons have no electric charge.  They are a neutral particle. 

-

-   Whenever an electric charge is accelerated photons are emitted.  Whenever, an electron in an atom drops from a higher shell to a lower shell a photon is emitted. ( See Review 2557 "The Electron").  Photons are emitted whenever matter and anti-matter come together and are annihilated ( See Review 2662 - "Antimatter").

-

-  Since the photon is massless you cannot use E = m*c^2, because you get zero energy.  For massless particles you have to use E = p*c.  Where “p” is its momentum.

-

------------------------  E^2  =  c^2*p^2 + m^2*c^4

-

-  The Force is the rate of change of momentum with respect to time.  F = dp/dt

-

-  In 1900 the electromagnetic energy radiation calculated from the temperature of an object was:

-

-------------------  E  = 8*pi*f^2*k*T/c^3               , where k is Boltzman’s Constant.

-

-  But, in 1905 the formula changed due to the discovery of Planck’s Constant:

-

------------------- E = 8*pi*f^3/c^3 * (e^h*f/k*T - 1)    

-

-------------------, where “h” = 6.6*10^-34 kilograms*m^2/sec.

-

-  Photons can propagate with left-handed or right-handed rotation , or “polarization“.  That is what makes Polaroid glasses work as sunglasses. 

-

-   Photons have an integer spin = 1.  Therefore they are “Bosons” and obey the Bose-Einstein statistics in probabilistic behavior.

-

-  In contrast, electrons have a spin = ½ .  They are “Fermions” and obey the Fermi-Durac statistics of probabilistic behavior and Pauli’s Exclusion Principle.

-

-    Look up in the night sky and see a star. Use a wattmeter and measure the intensity of the light coming from that star.  The wattmeter peaks at 560 nanometers wavelength and the intensity is 1.6 * 10^-9 watts / meter^2.  

-

-   560 nanometers is the color of blue-green light.   The light from that star has traveled over 1 billion lightyears and is therefore 1 billion years old.   In order to see that star how many of these old photons are entering your eye?

-

-----------  The energy of one photon   =  E  =  h*f

-

-----------   f = frequency = c / wavelength

-

-----------   The intensity in watts is the number of photons times the energy of each photon.  

-

-----------  N  =  I  / E

-

------------  N  =  I * w / h * c

-

------------  N  =  1.6 *10^-9 watts / m^2  *  5.6 * 10^-7 m     /     6.64*10^-34 kg*m^2/sec^2   *  3* 10^8 m

-

-------------  N  =  .44  kg m/sec^2 * sec      /    kg*m^3 /sec^2   

-

--------------  N  =  .44 * ^10 photons / m^2 / sec

-

--------------  N  =  4.4 billion photons / meter^2 / sec

-

-  The eye has a pupil that is ½ centimeter in diameter.

-

-------------  Diameter = .005 meters  

-

-  The area of the pupil   =  pi * r^2  =  3.14 * (2.5* 10^-3)^2 m^2

-

---------------Area = 2 * 10^-5 m^2

-

-  The number of photons entering the eye =  4.4*10^9 photons / m^2 * sec   *   2 * 10^-5 m^2  =  .9 * 10^5 photons / sec

-

-------------  The eye is detecting 90,000 photons / second.

-

-  The eye is capable of detecting as little as 25 photons / second of red light.  That is enough energy to trigger the optic nerve in the retina.  With a night adapted eye, after 20 minutes in darkness, the eye’s chemistry changes and it is able to detect as few as 5 photons / second.

-

September 23, 2022       PHOTONS  -  Let there be light?         2113        3692                                                                                                                                      

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--------------------- ---  Saturday, September 24, 2022  ---------------------------

3691 - COSMIC RAYS - where do they come from?

  -  3691  -   COSMIC  RAYS  -  where do they come from?     The light from the sun is scattered in the Earth's atmosphere and spreads evenly across the entire sky. Cosmic rays are also scattered on their way to Earth, through interactions with cosmic magnetic fields. All we can see from Earth is an evenly illuminated image; the origin of the radiation remains hidden.

---------------------  3691  -   COSMIC  RAYS  -  where do they come from?  

-  Plasma is one of the four fundamental states of matter. It contains a significant portion of charged particles – ions and/or electrons. The presence of these charged particles is what primarily sets plasma apart from the other fundamental states of matter. It is the most abundant form of ordinary matter in the universe,  being mostly associated with stars, including the Sun. It extends to the rarefied intracluster medium and possibly to intergalactic regions.

-

-   Plasma can be artificially generated by heating a neutral gas or subjecting it to a strong electromagnetic field.  Scientists have been trying to solve a vexing problem regarding the weather in outer space.  At unpredictable times, high-energy particles bombard the Earth and objects outside the Earth's atmosphere with radiation that can endanger the lives of astronauts and destroy satellites' electronic equipment.

-

-   These cosmic ray flare-ups can even trigger showers of radiation strong enough to reach passengers in airplanes flying over the North Pole. Despite scientists' best efforts, a clear pattern of how and when flare-ups will occur has remained enduringly difficult to identify.

-

-   NASA's Parker Solar Probe, the closest spacecraft to the sun is directly observing the predicted distribution of high-energy particles that are generated in the sun's outer atmosphere.   Magnetic fields in the outer atmosphere of the sun can accelerate ions and electrons up to velocities close to the speed of light. 

-

-   The sun and other stars' outer atmosphere consist of particles in a plasma state, a highly turbulent state distinct from liquid, gas, and solid states. Scientists have long believed that the sun's plasma generates high-energy particles. But particles in plasma move so erratically and unpredictably that they have until now not been able to fully demonstrate how and when this occurs.

-

-   In 1949, the physicist Enrico Fermi began to investigate magnetic fields in outer space as a potential source of the high-energy particles (which he called cosmic rays) that were observed entering the Earth's atmosphere. Since then, scientists have suspected that the sun's plasma is a major source of these particles.

-

-  The vast majority of the observable matter in the universe is in a plasma state. Understanding how some of the particles that constitute plasma can be accelerated to high-energy levels is an important new research area since energetic particles are routinely observed not just around the sun but also in other environments across the universe, including the surroundings of black holes and neutron stars.

-

-  So far, we do not know which celestial objects emit the high-energy radiation that pelts the Earth from space.  Since their discovery 100 years ago, researchers have been attempting to decipher where cosmic rays come from. The problem is that, viewed from Earth, they look like the sky during daytime to the naked eye, equally brightly illuminated almost everywhere we look.

-

-  This is because the light from the sun is scattered in the Earth's atmosphere and spreads evenly across the entire sky. Cosmic rays are also scattered on their way to Earth, through interactions with cosmic magnetic fields. All we can see from Earth is an evenly illuminated image; the origin of the radiation remains hidden.

-

-  Computer programs can simulate not only cosmic ray propagation, but also signatures of neutrinos and gamma rays that are produced in cosmic ray interactions.  Unlike cosmic rays, these messenger particles can be observed directly from their sources, as they come to Earth on a straight path. 

-

September 23, 2022        COSMIC  RAYS  -  where do they come from?           3691                                                                                                                                      

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--------------------- ---  Friday, September 23, 2022  ---------------------------

3690 - SUNSPOTS - what causes spots on the Sun?

  -  3690  -   SUNSPOTS -  what causes spots on the Sun?   The sun is a great ball of fiery, electrically charged gas. As the sun advances through its regular 11-year solar cycle, electromagnetic activity on the star's surface gets more and more chaotic. This turbulence inevitably leads to the appearance of sunspots which are dark, planet-size regions that form in the sun's lower atmosphere as a result of intense magnetic disturbances.

---------------------  3690  -  SUNSPOTS -  what causes spots on the Sun?

-  To most visible-light telescopes, sunspots appear black.   It turns out that sunspots aren't actually black. Rather, the darkness is just an optical illusion created by the contrasting heat of sunspots and their surroundings that are so bright.  

-

-  The two massive sunspot groups became visible at the northeast limb of the sun after becoming active while still hidden by the sun's disk.  The reason sunspots appear so much darker than the rest of the sun's visible surface, or photosphere, is because they are much cooler, and the gas underneath a sunspot emits about 25% as much light as the rest of the sun. 

-

-  Sunspots are still scorching hot with  temperatures of about 6,300 degrees Fahrenheit, but,  the surrounding photosphere blazes at roughly 10,000 F.

-

-  Sunspots are cool because they form in regions where magnetic fields are especially strong, roughly 2,500 times stronger than Earth's, and far stronger than anywhere else on the sun. This increases the magnetic pressure exerted on sunspots, thereby inhibiting the flow of heat from the sun's interior to the surface and leaving the region cooler than its surroundings.

-

-  The pent-up magnetic energy of sunspots can have some spectacular  and dangerous side effects. When the magnetic-field lines around sunspots become too tangled, they can snap into new configurations, releasing sudden bursts of magnetic energy. This energy can interact with the surrounding plasma, hot, electrically charged gas that makes up much of the sun, and create an explosion of energy known as a “solar flare“. 

-

-   Solar flares always occur in active regions near sunspots, which means the more sunspots there are on the sun at a given time, the more likely a flare is to erupt. Sunspots are more likely to occur near the climax of the sun's 11-year activity cycle, also known as the "solar maximum," when magnetic activity peaks.

-

-  The heat from a flare can, in turn, trigger another sort of explosion called a coronal mass ejection (CME), in which charged solar particles blast straight out of the sun’s atmosphere and zoom across space at high speeds.

-

-  Most CMEs sail harmlessly into space. But if a CME happens to be aimed at Earth, there can be harmful consequences. As a CME passes over Earth’s atmosphere, it can knock out power grids, cause radio blackouts or damage satellites; life on Earth remains protected by our planet's magnetic field, but astronauts working in space may be hit with higher-than-normal doses of radiation.

-

-   When a CME hits Earth, the resulting rain of charged particles through our planet's atmosphere causes auroras to appear at much lower latitudes than usual. For that beautiful display of color in Earth's sky, you can thank a big, dark dot on the sun.

-

September 21, 2022          SUNSPOTS -  what causes spots on the Sun?     3690                                                                                                                                      

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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--------------------- ---  Friday, September 23, 2022  ---------------------------

3689 - MAGNETARS and MASERS -

  -  3689  -  MAGNETARS  and  MASERS  -   For the first time, astronomers have definitively spotted a flaring “magnetar” in another galaxy.  These ultra-magnetic stellar corpses were thought to be responsible for some of the highest-energy explosions in the nearby universe. But until this burst, no one could prove it.

---------------------  3689  -  MAGNETARS  and  MASERS  -

-    The first sign of this magnetar arrived as a blast of X-rays and gamma rays. Five telescopes in space, including the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the Mars Odyssey orbiter, observed the blast, giving scientists enough information to track down its source: the galaxy NGC 253, or the Sculptor galaxy, 11.4 million light-years away.

-

-  At first, astronomers thought that the blast was a type of cataclysmic explosion called a short “gamma-ray burst“, or GRB, which are typically caused by colliding neutron stars or other destructive cosmic events.  But the signal looked weird for a short GRB: It rose to peak brightness quickly, within two milliseconds, tailed off for another 50 milliseconds and appeared to be over by about 140 milliseconds. As the signal faded, some of the telescopes detected fluctuations in the light that changed faster than a millisecond.

-

-  Typical short GRB’s that result from a neutron star collision don’t change like that. But, flaring magnetars in our own galaxy do, when the bright spot where the flare was emitted comes in and out of view as the magnetar spins.

-

-  Then, surprisingly, the Fermi telescope caught gamma rays with energies higher than a giga-electronvolt arriving four minutes after the initial blast. There is no way for the known sources of short GRBs to do that.

-

-  A flaring magnetar sent a blast of light  and particles zipping through space.  The interaction between those particles and the environment around the magnetar could help explain the blast’s strange appearance.  The flare may be triggered by a massive “star quake“, one thousand trillion trillion, or 10^27, times as large as the 9.5 magnitude earthquake recorded in Chile in 1960.

-

-    The quake led the magnetar to release a blob of plasma that sped away at nearly the speed of light, emitting gamma rays and X-rays as it went.  This discovery suggests that at least some signals that look like short GRBs are in fact from magnetar flares.   Most or all fast radio bursts could be magnetars?

-

-  Our Sun is only one of the billions of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. It’s also quite small compared to other stars, many are at least eight times more massive.  These massive stars influence the structure, shape and chemical content of a galaxy.

-

-   When massive stars have exhausted their hydrogen gas fuel and die, they do so in an explosive event called a “supernova“. This explosion is sometimes so strong that it triggers the formation of new stars out of materials in the dead star’s surroundings.

-

-  But there’s an important gap in our knowledge: astronomers don’t yet fully understand how those original massive stars themselves are initially formed. So far, observations have only yielded some pieces of the puzzle. This is because nearly all the known massive stars in our galaxy are located very far away from our solar system. 

-

-  Astronomers have recently found that the “funneling” of matter into a forming star happens at different rates over time. Sometimes the forming star swallows up a huge amount of matter, resulting in a burst of activities in the massive star. This is called an “accretion burst event“. It is incredibly rare: only three such events have been observed, out of all the billions of massive stars in the Milky Way.

-

-   After the first detection of an accretion burst, in 2016, astronomers from around the world agreed in 2017 to coordinate their efforts to observe more. Reported bursts have to be validated and followed up with more observations, and this takes a joint, global effort.

-

-  A “maser” is the microwave (radio frequency) equivalent of laser. The word stands for “microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”. Masers are observed using radio telescopes and most of them are observed at centimeter wavelength.

-

-  A “maser flare” can be a sign of an extraordinary event such as the formation of a star.  In January 2019, astronomers  noticed that one such massive protostar, G358-MM1, showed signs of new activity. The masers associated with the object brightened significantly over a short period of time. The theory is that masers brighten when excited by an accretion burst.

-

-   Follow-up observations with the Australian Long Baseline Array revealed something astronomers are witnessing for the first time, a blast of heat-wave coming from the source and traveling through the surroundings of the forming big star. Blasts can last for about two weeks to a few months.

-

-  Blasts like this were not observed in the previous two accretion bursts in massive stars. This may imply that it’s a different kind of accretion burst. There may even be a “zoo” of accretion burst types – a whole range of different types which act in different ways that may depend on the mass and evolutionary stage of the young star.

-

-  Although the burst activity has died down, the masers are still a lot brighter than they were before the burst. Astronomers are watching with interest to see whether a similar burst will occur again, and at what scale.

-

September 20, 2022             MAGNETARS  and  MASERS                  3689                                                                                                                                     

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--------------------- ---  Wednesday, September 21, 2022  ---------------------------

3687 - MICROBES - where life started?

  -  3687  -    MICROBES  -  where life started?  The deep ocean life community had a single origin at some point in life’s 4,000,000,000 year history.  Fossils show that surface life has changed enormously over billions of years, but slow-motion deep life may retain much of its primitive characteristics.  \

---------------------  3687  -   MICROBES  -  where life started?

-  Octopus genes are more advanced than any other order of animals on Earth. One of the groups of genes that they exhibit codes for the development of their amazing distributed nervous system. On top of this, “octopus” possess regenerative and camouflage capabilities, and are among the smartest animals on the planet.

-

-  There are species of single-celled organisms called “Archaea” that survive in environments so harsh they would melt the flesh from your bones in seconds. They live in super-alkaline lakes, in the ultra-high pressure of the Mariana trench, alongside nearly deep-fryer temperature hydrothermal vents, and can even survive high doses of gamma radiation. These are not bacteria, and may indeed be the earliest form of prokaryotic life on Earth.

-

-  Tardigrades, called “water bears”, can survive in the harsh cold and pure vacuum of space, and can put themselves in a dormant state in which their metabolism reduces to 0.01% of normal, allowing them to live to nearly 30 years in more moderate conditions, essentially extending their expected lifespan of only a few months by 300 times.

-

-  There are four species of Hyena, that powerful and hardy scavenger that lurks in the African savannah. Though they have physical and behavioral characteristics of both cats and dogs, they are neither. Hyenas belong to their own family, “Hyenadae“, and they evolved and thrived because they fit a particular niche in their ecosystem.

-

-  “Marsupials” were once the dominant mammalian order on the planet. Like other mammals, they give birth, but the young are undeveloped and spend most of their time outside of the mother’s body suckling and growing in a pouch. 

-

-  Marsupials boasted gigantic grazing species and terrifying predators the size of lions, but were eventually out competed by other mammals in those particular niches and now only exist in Australia and the Americas in more limited capacities.

-

-  “Turritopsis dohrnii” is a species of “medusae jellyfish” that, when reaching a point of being too old, injured or sick, reverts back into its “childlike” polyp state and then regrows, creating a cycle of near immortality.

-

-  These are a few creatures that live with us now, and they are nearly as different from us as much alien life will be.   Despite how different these subjects are, the fact remains they evolved on Earth, with us. We are all descendants of the very first living cells that appeared sometime between 3.8 and 4.3 billion years ago during the Eoarchean Era.

-

-   Since then, life has been branching out in innumerable different directions, constantly testing the boundaries of its environments to see what forms can thrive and what forms are insufficient. Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” has been at play for billions of years.

-

-  Scientists estimate that there may be as many as 8.7 million species currently alive on Earth today. We’re only sure of roughly 1.2 million of those, which are catalogued. It’s taken the work of many generations of explorers and biologists to find and record them, but that’s where we are now. The work is never-ending.

-

-  We discover, on average, about 50 new species every day, based on the 18,000 found in 2016.  There’s a flipside to that number which is utterly horrifying:  150 species go extinct every day in our modern world, which may be 1,000 times the natural rate.

-

-  This means that we are losing species 3 times faster than we are finding them.  This means that by this time next year, 36,000 types of living things will have gone extinct before we get a chance to witness their existence.

-

-  What about all those species that lived, but we’ll never discover?  Based on the data scientists have currently, most species tend to exist for a period of 3 million years, at most, before they disappear. 

-

-  “Disappear”, in this instance, means went “extinct“.  The fossil record as we know it comes almost entirely from evidence found in sedimentary rock, which generally is only found very near the surface of the planet. Over the huge expanse of geologic time, billions of years, via plate tectonics, volcanism and asteroid impacts, most of those deposits that have ever existed have been subsumed into much deeper layers of the planet. We will, likely, never have teams of paleontologists searching for fossils twenty miles below the surface.

-

-  When you consider the countless potential species of microscopic organisms, which multiply so quickly and have such short generations, there have likely existed many billions of species on Earth since the dawn of life.

-

-  All of life as we currently know it, everything we see living around us today, represents at most half a billion years of evolution. Every recognizable form of life, from flowers to insects to dinosaurs to deer, evolved in less than 1/8th of the time life has been on Earth.

-

-  So much time is unaccounted for, so much evolution, that there may have been enough time for multiple entire other complete evolutionary trees to develop before being totally wiped clean from the face of the planet.

-

-  Earth is not our Earth. It’s belonged to living things for so long that there may have been advanced, even intelligent, species to come along billions of years ago. It’s just been so long, with so many geologic changes along the way, that any evidence of their time here could never be uncovered.

-

Where do we, humans, fit into this?  “Neanderthals“  only existed for a few hundred thousand years before being put out of business by modern humans, “Homo sapiens“. All of the genus Homo has only been around for roughly 2.5 million years.  Apes, as whole, have only existed for 15 million years, while modern sharks have managed to thrive for more than ten times that amount of time.

-

-  Will modern humans still be around in a million years? 100,000 years? 1,000 years? There are ample reasons to assume we may not be here in 100 years.  If we do manage to survive for millennia more, then we may have a chance to “disappear” like so many other species have: Our species slowly transforming over time into new species, perhaps because we transport populations off-planet as Elon Musk and NASA plan to do shortly.

-

-  Homo sapiens is the latest branch in a singular limb of the evolutionary tree. We have caused the extinction of many other of our fellow species, and continue to do so, at an alarming rate. 

-

-  If we make it past our current two minutes to midnight setting on the Doomsday Clock, then we may be the ancestors to numerous other species that progress through oncoming millions, maybe even billions, of years remaining until the Earth is swallowed up when our dear Sun becomes a red giant.

-

-  Something odd is stirring in the depths of Canada's Kidd Mine. The zinc and copper mine, 350 miles northwest of Toronto, is the deepest spot ever explored on land and the reservoir of the oldest known water. And yet 7,900 feet below the surface, in perpetual darkness and in waters that have remained undisturbed for up to two billion years, the mine is teeming with life.

-

-  Many scientists had doubted that anything could live under such extreme conditions. But geologists reported that the mine’s dark, deep water harbors a population of remarkable microbes.

-

-  The single-celled organisms don’t need oxygen because they breath sulfur compounds. Nor do they need sunlight. Instead, they live off chemicals in the surrounding rock, the glittery mineral “pyrite“, commonly known as fool’s gold.   It's a fascinating system where the organisms are literally eating fool's gold to survive.

-

-  Scientists are starting to find similar microbes in other deep spots, including boreholes, volcanic vents on the bottom of the ocean and buried sediments far beneath the seafloor.

The deep microbial realm reveals a biosphere that’s more extensive, resilient, varied and strange than we had realized.

-

-  Cut off from light, air, and any connection to the surface, this shadowy realm seems more like an alien world than part of Earth.   It could help us understand how life might have begun on other planets as well as on our own. We might even find alien-like creatures living undetected right beneath our feet.

-

-  Scientists estimate that some 5 x 10^29 cells live in the deep Earth: that’s five-hundred-thousand-trillion-trillion cells. Collectively, they weigh 300 times as much as all living people combined. 

-

-  The denizens of the deep are an exotic bunch even beyond their appetite for solid rock. One species, the microbe “Geogemma barossii“, can live at temperatures of 250 degrees Fahrenheit, well above the boiling point of water and close to the theoretical limit at which vital organic molecules start to disintegrate.

-

-   Material drilled near the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean hint that some organisms could be living six miles below the seafloor, limited only by the heat at such tremendous depths. Laboratory experiments show that some microbes can tolerate pressures 20,000 times higher than the air pressure at sea level, meaning that there are almost certainly more extreme ecosystems out there than the one in the Kidd Mine.

-

-  The pace of existence in the deep also seems radically different from that on the surface. In ancient environments like the trapped waters at the bottom of the Kidd Mine, food and energy are scarce. To compensate, cellular metabolism slows almost to a standstill.

-

-  Many of the microbes may survive for thousands of years or more without dividing, just replacing their broken parts.  There are so many deep microbes that, despite a seemingly lazy existence, they collectively exert a huge impact on their habitats.

-

-   A community of cells on the ocean floor consume methane gas that bubbles up from ancient sediment.  Deep subsurface microbes eat massive amounts of methane that would otherwise be released, helping curb atmospheric levels of a potent greenhouse gas.

-

-  The deep-life community  probably had a single origin at some point in life’s 4,000,000,000 year history.  Fossils show that surface life has changed enormously over billions of years, but slow-motion deep life may retain much of its primitive characteristics.  The rock has lain undisturbed for 2.7 billion years, and has been cool enough to support life for at least 2 billion years.

-

-  Scientists want to sequence the genes of the Kidd Creek microbes and then do a “23andMe-style” analysis to unravel their kinship to other residents of the deep Earth. Are they all still close relatives, or have they diversified and adapted significantly to their local environments?    Sulfur-breathing microbes living beneath thick, protective layers of rock would have been well suited to the brutal conditions on our planet when it was young.

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-  We see only what we look for. If we don't look for something, we miss it.”

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September 20, 2022       MICROBES  -  where life started?                      3687                                                                                                                                     

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--------------------- ---  Wednesday, September 21, 2022  ---------------------------