Tag: decades

science daily

Leaving so soon? Unusual planetary nebula fades mere decades after it arrived — ScienceDaily

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Stars are rather patient. They can live for billions of years, and they typically make slow transitions — sometimes over many millions of years — between the different stages of their lives.

So when a previously typical star’s behavior rapidly changes in a few decades, astronomers take note and get to work.

Such is the case with a star known as SAO 244567, which lies at the center of Hen 3-1357, commonly known as the Stingray Nebula. The Stingray Nebula is a planetary nebula — an expanse of material sloughed off from a star as it enters a new phase of old age and then heated by that same star into colorful displays that can last for up to a million years.

The tiny Stingray Nebula unexpectedly appeared in the 1980s and was first imaged by scientists in the 1990s using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. It is by far the

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science daily

Octogenarian snapper found off Australia becomes oldest tropical reef fish by two decades — ScienceDaily

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An 81-year-old midnight snapper caught off the coast of Western Australia has taken the title of the oldest tropical reef fish recorded anywhere in the world.

The octogenarian fish was found at the Rowley Shoals — about 300km west of Broome — and was part of a study that has revised what we know about the longevity of tropical fish.

The research identified 11 individual fish that were more than 60 years old, including a 79-year-old red bass also caught at the Rowley Shoals.

Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) Fish Biologist Dr Brett Taylor, who led the study, said the midnight snapper beat the previous record holder by two decades.

“Until now, the oldest fish that we’ve found in shallow, tropical waters have been around 60 years old,” he said.

“We’ve identified two different species here that are becoming octogenarians, and probably older.”

Dr Taylor said the research will

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science in the news

China launches lander to snag moon dirt for the first time in decades

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Long March rocket with Chang'e 5 lander inside

The Long March rocket carrying Chang’e 5, prepared for launch.


CNSA

China’s space agency launched its Chang’e 5 lunar sample return mission Monday on top of one of its Long March 5 rockets.

The mission consists of a lunar orbiter, lander, ascent probe and re-entry module. According to NASASpaceflight.com, landing is expected Nov. 29 on Mons Rumker, a region of the moon that has seen volcanic activity in its past more recently than other parts of our natural satellite. This could mean that the area is home to some of the youngest moon rocks around, providing a new window into its geology.

The China National Space Administration says the Chang’e 5 lander will drill into the lunar surface “to collect underground rocks” and use a mechanical arm to scoop up samples of surface soil. The

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science

China to launch moon mission, seeking to be first country in decades to collect lunar rocks

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China is preparing to send an unmanned spacecraft to a previously unexplored part of the moon on Tuesday in a bid to bring back material that could help scientists better understand the satellite’s origins.



a man in a blue shirt standing in front of a crowd: Workers prepare for the launch of the Long March-5 rocket, which will carry the Chang'e-5 lunar mission, at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in southern China's Hainan province on Nov. 23, 2020.

© Tingshu Wang/Reuters
Workers prepare for the launch of the Long March-5 rocket, which will carry the Chang’e-5 lunar mission, at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in southern China’s Hainan province on Nov. 23, 2020.

Only the United States and the Soviet Union have successfully brought lunar material back to Earth.

Chang’e-5 is scheduled to launch from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. local time Tuesday. The mission is named for the Chinese goddess of the moon.

The Long March-5 launch rocket carrying the Chang’e-5’s four modules — the lander, the ascent vehicle, the service capsule and the return capsule — began its fueling process on Monday, Chinese

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science

China Moon Mission Will Try To Bring Back The First Lunar Rocks In Decades : NPR

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The rocket, pictured on Nov. 17, will launch China’s Chang’e-5 lunar probe on Tuesday. Here it is being transported to the launching area at the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in southern China’s Hainan province.

Stringer/AFP via Getty Images


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Stringer/AFP via Getty Images

The rocket, pictured on Nov. 17, will launch China’s Chang’e-5 lunar probe on Tuesday. Here it is being transported to the launching area at the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in southern China’s Hainan province.

Stringer/AFP via Getty Images

China is planning to launch an uncrewed spacecraft to the moon on Tuesday, which will shovel up lunar rocks soil and bring them back to Earth. If successful, it would be the first time any country has retrieved samples from the moon in more than 40 years.

The mission, called Chang’e-5, is part of a series of complex trips to the moon by the China National

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science in the news

Could COVID-19 immunity last decades? Here’s the science.

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The body builds a protective fleet of immune cells when infected with COVID-19, and in many people, those defenses linger for more than six months after the infection clears, according to a new study.



a close up of a flower: Illustration of b cells and antibodies

© Provided by Live Science
Illustration of b cells and antibodies

The immune cells appear so stable, in fact, that immunity to the virus may last at least several years, the study authors said. “That amount of [immune] memory would likely prevent the vast majority of people from getting hospitalized disease, severe disease, for many years,” co-author Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology in California, told The New York Times, which first reported on the study.

That said, making predictions about how long immunity to the coronavirus lasts can be “tricky,” Nicolas Vabret, an assistant professor of medicine at the Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine, who was not involved

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science daily

Jets ‘turned on’ in past two decades or so — ScienceDaily

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Astronomers using data from the ongoing VLA Sky Survey (VLASS) have found a number of distant galaxies with supermassive black holes at their cores that have launched powerful, radio-emitting jets of material within the past two decades or so. The scientists compared data from VLASS with data from an earlier survey that also used the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to reach their conclusion.

“We found galaxies that showed no evidence of jets before but now show clear indications of having young, compact jets,” said Dr. Kristina Nyland, who is an NRC postdoctoral fellow in residence at the Naval Research Laboratory.

“Jets like these can strongly affect the growth and evolution of their galaxies, but we still don’t understand all of the details. Catching newborn jets with surveys like VLASS provides a measure of the role of powerful radio jets in shaping the lives of

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science daily

Consequences of decades of global nutrition transition — ScienceDaily

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Just a handful of rice and beans — a part of our world is starved. Hawaiian Pizza and ice-cream — another part of our world is stuffed, throwing away food every day. This gap is likely to worsen, while food waste will increase and pressure on the environment will go up, a new study shows. Researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) assessed the consequences if the current nutrition transition, from scarce starch-based diets towards processed foods and animal products, continues — the calculations combine, for the first time, estimates for under- and overweight, food composition and waste. Their findings provide a startling look ahead: By 2050, more than 4 billion people could be overweight, 1.5 billion of them obese, while 500 million people continue to be underweight.

“If the observed nutrition transition continues, we will not achieve the United Nations goal of eradicating hunger worldwide,” explains

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new technology

Baylor looking for 1st win in 3 decades on Texas Tech campus

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The last time Baylor played a game on the Texas Tech campus was 12 years ago.

It has been a lot longer since the Bears won there: three decades ago, when both teams were still in the old Southwest Conference.

Baylor (1-4, 1-4 Big 12) returns to Lubbock on Saturday, looking to break a four-game losing streak since winning Dave Aranda’s head coaching debut to open this season.

Texas Tech (2-5, 1-5) is already guaranteed a losing record in Big 12 play for the 11th season in a row, after back-to-back losses. The Red Raiders have to win the rest of their games, plus a bowl game if they make one, to avoid their fifth consecutive losing record overall.

The Red Raiders haven’t gotten the offensive spark coach Matt Wells had hoped for when he replaced oft-injured but now healthy Alan Bowman with Henry Colombi as the starting quarterback. The

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science and technology

Decades Ago, One Political Scientist Rejected Political Polling as Faulty and Futile. Maybe the World Should Have Listened.

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Every era enshrines its prophets. Politics today has whiz kids like Nate Silver, Nate Cohn, Harry Enten and Dave Wasserman, who have achieved varying degrees of cultural celebrity by telling us what to expect come Election Day—even when, as happened once again this week, their vision proves cloudy (or worse). In 1948 there was no greater prophet than George Gallup, whose face graced the cover of Time magazine in May of that year. The accompanying profile called him “the Babe Ruth of the polling profession.”



a man sitting on a table

© Byron Rollins/AP Photo


Gallup’s name had by then become synonymous with a wide-ranging new effort by survey-takers and statisticians who were striving to know, with scientific precision, the very nature of American mind, including which presidents the public meant to elect. Gallup had rocketed to fame in 1936 by confidently declaring that the Literary Digest—at the time the gold standard of polls, which

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