Science Digest July 17 / 2023
@scienceWelcome to @Science telegram channel Digest, your go-to source for concise and captivating summaries of the latest scientific breakthroughs and discoveries across various disciplines, keeping you informed and inspired. Stay updated with cutting-edge research and expand your scientific knowledge with our bite-sized articles.
'Tired light' might make the universe twice as old as we thought
Reviving an almost century-old hypothesis, a new study led by Rajendra Gupta at the University of Ottawa based on data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) suggests that the universe may be twice as old as previously thought.
It's commonly accepted in cosmological circles that the Big Bang occurred 13.797 billion years ago, based on the redshift caused by the expansion of the universe in four dimensions. However, like most things in the rarified frontiers of advanced physics, nothing is set in stone because there are gaps in our knowledge of some very basic properties of the cosmos and there are any number of anomalies to be accounted for.
AUKUS treaty members set sights on revolutionary quantum sub navigation
Using very small atoms to guide very large submarines, Q-CTRL has been awarded a contract by the Australian Department of Defence to develop quantum mechanics systems for the AUKUS treaty partners to navigate subs on long underwater missions.
The single greatest strength of the submarine is its stealth. Once submerged, detecting a modern military submarine is extremely difficult. This not only makes such boats great weapons of war, but also weapons of peace because submarines can be dispatched into unstable areas as a show of force without being a direct provocation. In fact, they don't even need to be sent at all to have the same effect.
"Biological camera" stores data in DNA of living bacteria
SScientists have developed a new way to tap into the incredible data storage density of DNA in a more scalable way. A “biological camera” imprints images into the DNA of living cells, tagged with barcodes to retrieve data.
As with many human technologies, nature has greatly outdone us when it comes to data storage. DNA can store information more efficiently than any system we’ve come up with, cramming as much as 215 million GB of data into a single gram of the stuff. Better yet, under the right conditions it can last millennia or maybe even longer, so it’s not surprising that scientists are trying to find ways to store data on DNA.
Climate change is changing the color of our oceans
A new study analyzing 20 years of data has found that our oceans have changed color, indicating a significant shift in marine ecosystems that is likely due to human-caused climate change.
For decades, satellites have been measuring the color of the Earth’s oceans, collecting data on the color of light reflecting off the water. One satellite in particular, the Aqua satellite, with its Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor, has recently completed 20 years of collecting high-quality global ocean-color data. A new study led by MIT and the UK’s National Oceanography Center has examined this data and detected changes in ocean color over the past 20 years that can’t be explained by natural, year-to-year variability alone.
Exercise during dialysis treatment delivers big health benefits
Nearly 560,000 Americans regularly undergo dialysis each year, and while treatment can vastly improve quality of life, it can also contribute to worsening it. Patients receiving crucial, life-saving kidney treatment often become less physically active, which can present or amplify comorbidities. In an aging population, this can result in increased frailty, risk of falls and hospitalization, among other conditions.
Researchers from the Technology University of Munich (TUM) have looked at how light exercise, tailored to each patient’s abilities, can result in a greater quality of life and less hospital visits while undergoing dialysis.
Webb may have spotted "dark stars" made of annihilating dark matter
The James Webb Space Telescope has already spotted some amazing things in its first year of science operations, but if a new study holds water it might be one of the most important finds of all time. A team of astrophysicists proposes that three bright objects detected by Webb in the distant universe could be the first candidate “dark stars,” hypothetical celestial objects powered by the annihilation of dark matter.
Webb’s unprecedented power allows astronomers to look farther away in space and back in time than any other telescope before, but in doing so it keeps discovering things that mess with our understanding of the cosmos. For instance, it keeps spotting galaxies that appear to be too advanced for their age, growing too big in too short a time since the Big Bang. Whether galaxies grow faster than we thought, or the universe is much older than we give it credit for, it seems that something in our models needs tweaking.
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