[Unmuseum_newsletter] Science Over the Edge - July/August 2019

Tue Jul 2 22:27:00 EDT 2019

Science Over the Edge - July/August 2019

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In the News:

[cid:fd4dcaf4-b82e-4f88-84dd-1b80bf8ce2f2]Researchers Decipher The History Of Supermassive Black Holes In The Early Universe - Astrophysicists at Western University have found evidence for the direct formation of black holes that do not need to emerge from a star remnant. The production of black holes in the early universe, formed in this manner, may provide scientists with an explanation for the presence of extremely massive black holes at a very early stage in the history of our universe. Shantanu Basu and Arpan Das from Western's Department of Physics & Astronomy have developed an explanation for the observed distribution of supermassive black hole masses and luminosities, for which there was previously no scientific explanation. The findings were published today by Astrophysical Journal Letters. The model is based on a very simple assumption: supermassive black holes form very, very quickly over very, very short periods of time and then suddenly, they stop. This explanation contrasts with the current understanding of how stellar-mass black holes are formed, which is they emerge when the centre of a very massive star collapses in upon itself. "This is indirect observational evidence that black holes originate from direct-collapses and not from stellar remnants," says Basu, an astronomy professor at Western who is internationally recognized as an expert in the early stages of star formation and protoplanetary disk evolution. Basu and Das developed the new mathematical model by calculating the mass function of supermassive black holes that form over a limited time period and undergo a rapid exponential growth of mass. The mass growth can be regulated by the Eddington limit that is set by a balance of radiation and gravitation forces or can even exceed it by a modest factor. "Supermassive black holes only had a short time period where they were able to grow fast and then at some point, because of all the radiation in the universe created by other black holes and stars, their production came to a halt," explains Basu. "That's the direct-collapse scenario."

Researchers Grow Active Mini-Brain-Networks - Cerebral organoids are artificially grown, 3D tissue cultures that resemble the human brain. Now, researchers from Japan report functional neural networks derived from these organoids in a study publishing June 27 in the journal Stem Cell Reports. Although the organoids aren't actually "thinking," the researchers' new tool - which detects neural activity using organoids - could provide a method for understanding human brain function. "Because they can mimic cerebral development, cerebral organoids can be used as a substitute for the human brain to study complex developmental and neurological disorders," says corresponding author Jun Takahashi, a professor at Kyoto University. However, these studies are challenging, because current cerebral organoids lack desirable supporting structures, such as blood vessels and surrounding tissues, Takahashi says. Since researchers have a limited ability to assess the organoids' neural activities, it has also been difficult to comprehensively evaluate the function of neuronal networks. "In our study, we created a new functional analysis tool to assess the comprehensive dynamic change of network activity in a detected field, which reflected the activities of over 1,000 cells," says first and co-corresponding author Hideya Sakaguchi, a postdoctoral fellow at Kyoto University (currently at Salk Institute). "The exciting thing about this study is that we were able to detect dynamic changes in the calcium ion activity and visualize comprehensive cell activities." To generate the organoids, Takahashi, Sakaguchi, and their team created a ball of pluripotent stem cells that have the potential to differentiate into various body tissues. Then, they placed the cells into a dish filled with culture medium that mimicked the environment necessary for cerebral development. Using the organoids, the team successfully visualized synchronized and non-synchronized activities in networks and connections between individual neurons. The synchronized neural activity can be the basis for various brain functions, including memory.

Bird Three Times Larger Than Ostrich Discovered In Crimean Cave - A surprise discovery in a Crimean cave suggests that early Europeans lived alongside some of the largest ever known birds, according to new research published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. It was previously thought that such gigantism in birds only ever existed on the islands of Madagascar and New Zealand as well as Australia. The newly-discovered specimen, discovered in the Taurida Cave on the northern coast of the Black Sea, suggests a bird as giant as the Madagascan elephant bird or New Zealand moa. It may have been a source of meat, bones, feathers and eggshell for early humans. "When I first felt the weight of the bird whose thigh bone I was holding in my hand, I thought it must be a Malagasy elephant bird fossil because no birds of this size have ever been reported from Europe. However, the structure of the bone unexpectedly told a different story," says lead author Dr Nikita Zelenkov from the Russian Academy of Sciences. "We don't have enough data yet to say whether it was most closely related to ostriches or to other birds, but we estimate it weighed about 450kg. This formidable weight is nearly double the largest moa, three times the largest living bird, the common ostrich, and nearly as much as an adult polar bear." It is the first time a bird of such size has been reported from anywhere in the northern hemisphere. Although the species was previously known, no one ever tried to calculate the size of this animal. The flightless bird, attributed to the species Pachystruthio dmanisensis, was probably at least 3.5 metres tall and would have towered above early humans. It may have been flightless but it was also fast.

Cosmic Cat And Mouse: Astronomers Capture And Tag A Fleeting Radio Burst - An Australian-led team of astronomers using the Gemini South telescope in Chile have successfully confirmed the distance to a galaxy hosting an intense radio burst that flashed only once and lasted but a thousandth of a second. The team made the initial discovery of the fast radio burst (FRB) using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope. The critical Gemini observations were key to verifying that the burst left its host galaxy some 4 billion years ago. Since the first FRB discovery in 2007, these mysterious objects have played a game of cosmic cat-and-mouse with astronomers -- with astronomers as the sharp-eyed cats! Fleeting radio outbursts, lasting about a millisecond (one-thousandth of one second), are difficult to detect, and even more difficult to locate precisely. In this case, the FRB, known as FRB 180924, was a single burst, unlike others that can flash multiple times over an extended period. "It is especially challenging to pinpoint FRBs that only flash once and are gone," said Keith Bannister of Australia's Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), who led the Australian team in the search effort. However, Bannister and his team did just that, which is a first. The result is published in the June 27th issue of the journal Science.

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Science Quote of the Month - "Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world." - Louis Pasteur

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What's New at the Museum:

Gustave Whitehead: Did He Beat the Wright Brothers into the Sky? - This enigmatic figure in aviation history supporters say he made controlled flights as early as 1899.- four years before the Wright Brothers.(An Encore Article)>. >Full Story<http://www.unmuseum.org/gustave.htm>

Mysterious Picture of the Month - What is this?<http://www.unmuseum.org/realsauc.htm>

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Ask the Curator:

Vallée and Bostrom - Is the idea that we are all just living in a big computer simulation related to what Jacques Vallée and people like that are talking about when they try to explain UFO's as not extraterrestrial craft but "control devices" and so on? That is, do they mean that the ones behind the UFO's are the programmers of this big simulation we're living in, who are doing experiments on us by sending these weird, anomalous phenomena and seeing how we deal with them? I never really understood what Vallée was getting at till I read the article on the world as a computer simulation in the current edition of the Museum of Unnatural Mystery. Thanks. - Alan Meyers

Dr. Jacques F. Vallée, a computer scientist, venture capitalist and former astronomer, has long been one of the "deep thinkers" in the arena of Ufology. Born in France in 1939 he became interested in the subject when he observed a UFO in 1955. At first Vallée was convinced that UFOs were extraterrestrial spacecraft and published his ideas in his book Anatomy of a phenomenon: unidentified objects in space--a scientific appraisal. By 1969, however, his thinking had changed and he began to see UFOs and alien abduction reports as part of a much larger phenomenon that included other paranormal events. He outlined his thinking for this in his book Passport to Magonia: >From Folklore to Flying Saucers. Vallée suggested in his book that flying saucers and alien visitors might not be from other planets, but from other dimensions or even different time periods. These ideas did not sit well with many UFO enthusiasts and Vallée soon found himself an outcast among their ranks, or as he put it a "heretic among heretics".

Vallée sees one possible explanation of the UFO phenomenon as that of a "control mechanism " with incidents as deceptions created to manipulate people and society. Sometimes this is done by other humans. For example, we know the US Air Force encouraged UFO reports to hide the flights of SR-71 Blackbird spy aircraft in the 80's. The Soviet Union also did the same thing to cover the launch of rockets that were not in compliance with the SALT treaty they had signed.

Much of the social manipulation caused by UFOs reports, however, Vallée suggests are done by non-human entities who have an agenda of which we are totally unaware. Vallée's initial thinking was that these entities were from another dimension, and were not operators of a simulated world that we are living in (See last month article on Living in a Video Game). "There is a distinction to be made between a Matrix-like virtual world and what I first proposed in 'Messengers,' [Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults his 1979 book] namely an information multiverse with fully physical manifestations" said Vallée, in an interview with SUB ROSA online magazine.

The multiverse he is thinking about is related to some of the interpretations of quantum theory which suggest that reality consists of many nearly parallel universes. If beings from one universe successfully figured out how to cross to another universe we might interpret them as extra terrestrials. A visitor moving from one quantum parallel universe to another also might be jumping in time also leading to the suggestion that flying saucers are our ancestors' attempts to manipulate their past.

Even though Vallée initial ideas with control mechanisms didn't involve our living in a simulated universe, in my opinion the idea that UFO incidents (and other paranormal experiences) are attempts by those outside the simulation to influence our society seem to make just as much sense as the multi-dimensional approach. Remember Vallée's initial thinking on this subject was published in 1979 long before Bostrom's 2002 paper on the simulation argument came out. Perhaps Vallée, after pondering Bostrom's thinking, will address this possibility directly in some future book.

Have a question? Click here to send it to us<http://www.unmuseum.org/postmail.htm>.

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In History:

Nikola Tesla - July 10,th 1856, is the anniversary of the birth of Nikola Tesla. The eccentric, but brilliant inventor brought us AC current along with a host of other discoveries and inventions involving electricity. For a full biography of his life and discoveries, click here<http://www.unmuseum.org/tesla.htm>.

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In the Sky:

Thunder Moon - The July full moon, is variously known as the "Buck Moon," "Hay Moon," or most dramatically as the "Thunder Moon." This year's Thunder Moon on July 16th will feature a partial ellipse as the northern portion of the Moon passes through the southern edge of the umbral shadow and becomes darkened. This will be visible in most of Africa, the Middle East, and western India and some of South America. Unfortunately, it will not be visible to most of our North American readers.

Perseids - Look for the Perseids Meteor shower peaking on the night of August 12, though it will be visible from July 17th, to August 26th. In a rural areas you may see 50-75 meteors an hour radiating from the constellation of Perseus. Though the peak will come on the 12th, it maybe hard to find the meteors that night as the moon will be mostly full, so looking some days before or after may make more sense.

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Observed:

 MUFON Half Century - This July the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) will be 50 years old. Located in Irvine, California, MUFON's objective is, according to its website: "Our goal is to be the inquisitive minds' refuge seeking answers to that most ancient question, 'Are we alone in the universe?' The answer, very simply, is no. Whether you have UFO reports to share, armchair UFO investigator aspirations, or want to train and join our investigation team, MUFON is here for you. Won't you please join us in our quest to discover the truth?" MUFON current executive director is Jan Harzan and he has experienced the phenomenon personally: "I've seen these craft. I know they are real," he told Space.com. "I can't tell you where they're from. I don't know if they are ours or belong to somebody else or whatever. But they are advanced technology." For more information check the organization's website at https://www.mufon.com/
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LGM:
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