Shocker! Japan firms' electrifying fabric zaps bacteria, viruses

TOKYO, Japan - It's a shocking idea: a fabric that can produce small amounts of electricity powered by movement, allowing your clothing to zap microbes and bacteria as you go about your day.

A pair of Japanese firms say that's exactly what their new product can do, and are touting it for everything from curbing body odor to offering the ideal material for protective gear like face masks.

The fabric jointly developed by electronics company Murata Manufacturing and Teijin Frontier, dubbed PIECLEX, generates power from the expansion and contraction of the material itself, including when worn by someone moving around.

The low voltages aren't strong enough to be felt by the wearer, but they effectively stop bacteria and viruses from multiplying inside the fabric, the companies said.

"It has been effective on 99.9 percent of bacteria and viruses we tested, working to curb their proliferation or inactivate them," a Murata spokeswoman told AFP on Friday.

The firms say the fabric has already shown promise for products like sportswear, sanitary items including diapers and masks, and for use in filters in industrial products.

They are now hoping to test whether the fabric can take on a particularly potent foe: the new coronavirus.

But testing is proving a challenge, with strict limits on the institutions that are allowed to handle the infectious disease.

Agence France-Presse

Summer unlikely to curb coronavirus pandemic growth: study

WASHINGTON - The higher summer temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere are unlikely to significantly limit the growth of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Princeton University study published Monday in the journal Science.

Several statistical studies conducted over the past few months have shown a slight correlation between climate and the novel coronavirus -- the hotter and more humid it is, the less likely the virus is to spread.


But the findings remain preliminary, and much remains unknown about the exact relationship between climate and COVID-19.

The Princeton study does not rule out the correlation entirely but concludes that the impact of climate on the spread of the virus is "modest."

"Our findings suggest, without effective control measures, strong outbreaks are likely in more humid climates and summer weather will not substantially limit pandemic growth," the study said.

"We project that warmer or more humid climates will not slow the virus at the early stage of the pandemic," said Rachel Baker, a postdoctoral research associate in the Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI).

While climate, particularly humidity, plays a role in the spread of other coronaviruses and the flu, the study said a more important factor is the absence of widespread immunity to COVID-19.

"We do see some influence of climate on the size and timing of the pandemic, but, in general, because there's so much susceptibility in the population, the virus will spread quickly no matter the climate conditions," Baker said. 

Baker said the spread of the virus seen in countries such as Brazil, Ecuador and Australia indicates that warmer conditions do little to halt the pandemic.

"It doesn't seem that climate is regulating spread right now," Baker said.

Without strong containment measures or a vaccine, the coronavirus may continue to infect a large proportion of the world's population, the researchers said, and only become seasonal later, "after the supply of unexposed hosts is reduced."

"Previously circulating human coronaviruses such as the common cold depend strongly on seasonal factors, peaking in the winter outside of the tropics," said co-author Bryan Grenfell, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at PEI.

"If, as seems likely, the novel coronavirus is similarly seasonal, we might expect it to settle down to become a winter virus as it becomes endemic in the population," Grenfell said.

For the study, the researchers conducted simulations on how the pandemic would respond to various climates. They ran scenarios based on what is known about the effect seasonal variations have on similar viruses.

In all three scenarios, climate only became a mitigating factor when large portions of the human population were immune or resistant to the virus. 

"The more that immunity builds up in the population, the more we expect the sensitivity to climate to increase," Baker said. "If you run the model long enough, you have a big pandemic and the outbreak settles into seasonal infection." 

Agence France-Presse

To 11 million Brazilians, the Earth is flat

SAO PAULO — Sitting by a model of the Earth shaped like a pancake, Brazilian restaurant-owner Ricardo lets out an exaggerated laugh: "'Hahaha!' That's how people react when you tell them the Earth is flat," he says.

Ricardo, who declines to give his full name for just that reason, is a 60-something man whose restaurant in Sao Paulo has become a meeting place for people who, like him, reject the notion that the Earth is a sphere.

"The only things I know for certain are that I'm going to die someday and that the Earth is flat," he says.

It is a curious but remarkably large club: more than 11 million people in Brazil -- 7 percent of the population -- believe the Earth is flat, according to polling firm Datafolha.

And their influence stretches surprisingly far, in a country currently swept up in the post-truth era and the anti-intellectual, climate-change-skeptic worldview embodied by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.

One of Bolsonaro's most prominent ideologues, the writer and former astrologer Olavo de Carvalho, has said he "cannot refute" Flat-Earth theory.

Yet Brazil's Flat-Earthers are also a secretive, at times paranoid, community, communicating via encrypted messages on WhatsApp, invitation-only Facebook groups and especially on YouTube, where their channels have tens of thousands of followers.

There, they are free to state what they believe, without fear of ridicule: that the Earth is a flat, stationary body.

It is an argument they advance with varying interpretations of physics, optics and the Bible, dismissing all evidence to the contrary as a conspiracy.

'HUMANKIND'S GREATEST LIE' 

Brazilians who believe the Earth is flat are mostly men, often Catholics or evangelical Christians, and with relatively low levels of education, according to Datafolha.

But don't confuse education with knowledge, the Flat-Earthers warn.

"Flat-Earthers are the smartest. Write that!" says Anderson Neves, a 50-year-old entrepreneur, who has come to Ricardo's restaurant armed with a pamphlet denouncing the "hoaxes" of Newton and Copernicus.

"A malignant pseudo-science has corrupted the education system around the world," says another text he is carrying.

It calls the idea of a round Earth "humankind's greatest lie, dictated by the global elite."

Next to him, Ricardo's Flat-Earth model shows the sun and Moon as little balls, equal in size, suspended above a disc-shaped planet.

"Just look at the horizon. Climb a mountain and take pictures. You can see the Earth isn't curved," says Neves, clutching a level to illustrate his point.

The Flat-Earthers are brimming with counter-factual questions: If the Earth is rotating at 1,700 kilometers per hour at the equator, why doesn't the movement make everything fly off? If it's a sphere, why can't we see the curve from an airplane?

They give little credit to photographs from space or scientists' answers about gravity, Foucault's pendulum and two millennia of astronomical observation.

"We've known for certain the Earth isn't flat since Galileo, since the early 17th century. But the ancient Greeks had pieced it together more than 2,000 years ago," says astronomer Roberto Costa of the University of Sao Paulo.

"To scientists, this (Flat-Earth theory) seems more like a topic for psychologists or sociologists to study. The Earth's shape isn't a scientific problem to astronomers."

TILTED EIFFEL TOWER 

One of the most prominent of Brazil's Flat-Earthers is Afonso de Vasconcelos, a geophysicist with a PhD from the University of Sao Paulo.

Vasconcelos is based in the United States, which is also home to a large community of Flat-Earthers. One of them died last week attempting to launch himself more than 1,500 meters into the sky in a homemade rocket.

Vasconcelos operates a YouTube channel called "True Science" (Ciencia de Verdade) where he expounds his ideas to 345,000 followers.

Fellow YouTuber Siddhartha Chaibub, "Professor Flat-Earth" (Professor Terra Plana), has nearly 30,000 followers. Last November, Chaibub helped organize the first-ever convention for Brazilian Flat-Earthers, which drew hundreds of people in Sao Paulo.

One of the favorite targets for Flat-Earthers' conspiracy theories is NASA. They accuse the US space agency of pulling a giant fraud.

"Man never landed on the Moon. That was a studio set," says Ricardo.

As for satellite images showing Earth's curvature from space, he demands: "Where's the tilted Eiffel Tower?"

Agence France-Presse 

'History unfolds': NASA streams first spacewalk by all-female team

WASHINGTON - The first-ever spacewalk with an all-female team began Friday, footage broadcast by NASA showed.

US astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir's mission to replace a power controller outside the International Space Station officially began at 1138 GMT.

"Christina, you may egress the airlock," spacecraft communicator Stephanie Wilson told the two.

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Facebook-backed research sees progress linking minds, machines

SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook-backed researchers have managed to translate brain signals into spoken words, bringing the social network's vision of linking brains and machines closer to reality.

A study published this week by University of California-San Francisco scientists showed progress toward a new type of brain-computer interface. The project involved brain implants, but could be a step toward accomplishing the goal with a non-invasive method such as augmented reality glasses with sensors.

"A decade from now, the ability to type directly from our brains may be accepted as a given," Facebook said Tuesday in an online post updating a project announced two years ago.

"Not long ago, it sounded like science fiction. Now, it feels within plausible reach."

Such a breakthrough could benefit people with paralysis, spinal cord injuries, neurodegenerative diseases or other conditions making them unable to speak, and may also let people control technology such as augmented reality glasses just by thinking, Facebook said.

"It's never too early to start thinking through the important questions that will need to be answered before such a potentially powerful technology should make its way into commercial products," Facebook said.

A study published in Nature Communications detailed how researchers were able to capture brain signals being sent to produce speech and figure out what people were trying to say.

A standard set of questions were asked of the volunteers in the study, with the computer provided context to help figure out answers.

"Currently, patients with speech loss due to paralysis are limited to spelling words out very slowly using residual eye movements or muscle twitches to control a computer interface," said UCSF neuroscientist Eddie Chang.

"But in many cases, information needed to produce fluent speech is still there in their brains. We just need the technology to allow them to express it."

AUGMENTED MINDS

The study was funded by Facebook Reality Labs, a research unit at the California-based internet titan focused on technology for augmented and virtual reality experiences.

The work is part of "Project Steno" exploring the feasibility of a wearable device that lets people type by imagining themselves talking.

"Our progress shows real potential in how future inputs and interactions with AR glasses could one day look," Facebook vice president of augmented and virtual reality Andrew Bosworth tweeted.

Researchers hope to eventually decode 100 words per minute in real time with a 1,000-word vocabulary and an error rate below 17 percent, according to Facebook.

Futurist entrepreneur Elon Musk revealed this month his secretive dis startup is making progress on an interface linking brains with computers, and said testing on people may begin next year.

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Who's a Good Boy? Wolves, not dogs, apparently

WASHINGTON, United States - If you're looking for a word to describe your adorable pet pup, "selfish" might not top the list.

But a new study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE suggests Fido's reputation for being caring is all a ruse -- at least if you're a fellow dog.

A series of touchscreen experiments carried out by the Wolf Science Center in Vienna, Austria found that wolves make for more selfless pack mates than dogs who were also raised in groups.

The study's authors say the findings suggest domestic dogs inherited their cooperative tendencies from their fierce wolf ancestors, rather than through their contact with human beings, a competing hypothesis.

Researchers trained the animals to use their snouts to press a "giving" symbol on a screen that delivered food to an adjacent enclosure, where a fellow animal may or may not be present.

Over multiple trials, wolves opted to deliver food to members of their own pack, knowing they would not get anything in return -- but lost interest if they were shown an unfamiliar wolf.

Dogs, on the other hand, showed no particular inclination to feed other dogs when no personal payoff was involved, regardless of whether they knew them or not.

"This study shows that domestication did not necessarily make dogs more prosocial," said lead author Rachel Dale.

"Rather, it seems that tolerance and generosity towards group members help to produce high levels of cooperation, as seen in wolves."

But don't write off your pooch just yet. The authors cautioned against applying the results of an experiment carried out on pack dogs to pet dogs, who have been found to have prosocial tendencies in past studies. 

The researchers believe those behaviors could be the result of training or encouragement, and say more research is needed to determine what accounts for the differences.

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First black hole photo

The first ever photograph of a black hole and its fiery halo released by Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) astronomers on Wednesday. The photograph is the "most direct proof of their existence," according to one of the project’s lead scientists.

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NASA captures unprecedented images of supersonic shockwaves

WASHINGTON- NASA has captured unprecedented photos of the interaction of shockwaves from two supersonic aircraft, part of its research into developing planes that can fly faster than sound without thunderous "sonic booms."

When an aircraft crosses that threshold -- around 1,225 kilometers per hour at sea level -- it produces waves from the pressure it puts on the air around it, which merge to cause the ear-splitting sound.

In an intricate maneuver by "rock star" pilots at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, two supersonic T-38 jets flew just 9 meters apart below another plane waiting to photograph them with an advanced, high-speed camera, the agency said.

The rendezvous -- at an altitude of around 30,000 feet or about 9,144 meters -- yielded mesmerizing images of the shockwaves emanating from both planes.

With one jet flying just behind the other, "the shocks are going to be shaped differently," said Neal Smith of AerospaceComputing Inc., an engineering firm that works with NASA, in a post on the agency's website.

"This data is really going to help us advance our understanding of how these shocks interact."

Sonic booms can be a major nuisance, capable of not just startling people on the ground but also causing damage -- like shattered windows -- and this has led to strong restrictions on supersonic flight over land in jurisdictions like the United States.

The ability to capture such detailed images of shockwaves will be "crucial" to NASA's development of the X-59, the agency said, an experimental supersonic plane it hopes will be able to break the sound barrier with just a rumble instead of a sonic boom.

A breakthrough like that could lead to the loosening of flight restrictions and the return of commercial supersonic planes for the first time since Concorde was retired in 2003.

Some countries and cities banned the Franco-British airliner from their airspace because of its sonic booms.

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Billionaire Branson says he'll fly to space by July

WASHINGTON -- British billionaire Richard Branson plans to travel to space within the next four or five months aboard his own Virgin Galactic spaceship, he told AFP Thursday. 

"My wish is to go up on the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, that's what we're working on," the head of the Virgin group said on the sidelines of an event to honor Virgin Galactic at the Air and Space Museum in Washington. 

The American Apollo 11 mission landed on the moon July 20, 1969.

Virgin Galactic is one of two companies, along with Blue Origin, on its way to sending passengers into space -- though just barely, and just for a few minutes. 

The companies want to send hundreds or thousands of people on these short "suborbital" flights, meaning they wouldn't get high enough to orbit the earth. 

These missions would be shorter and more affordable than SpaceX's planned project to send a Japanese billionaire to the moon by 2023 at the earliest. 

Virgin Galactic flew 50 miles (80 km) above the earth, which the US considers the edge of space, for the first time in December (the international consensus is 100 km). 

Virgin Galactic's spaceship, called SpaceShipTwo, is commanded by two pilots. 

To take off, it's dropped by a carrier plane like a bomb, then starts its own engine to jet off straight into the sky, eventually climbing high enough to see the curvature of the earth. 

The craft hovers and descends naturally, gliding back towards its original departure point, Mojave Air and Space Port in California.

It will be able to carry six passengers along with its two pilots. 

Branson has previously announced dates for this first trip into space, though they've always come and gone without the voyage happening.

But this time the businessman claims preparations are in their final stages. 

"By July we should have done enough testing," he said. 

But he doesn't want to make any promises he can't keep: "I need to wait for our team to say they're 100% happy. I don't want to push them," he said, but thinks they'll be ready for clients by the end of the year. 

He told AFP Virgin Galactic costs him $35 million a month; previously, he said he had invested more than a billion dollars in the venture since the 2000s.

According to Branson, the SpaceShipTwo's next test flight is planned for February 20, depending on weather conditions. 

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Galaxy 'mega-merger' 10 billion years ago forged Milky Way

The Milky Way's signature halo is mostly stellar rubble from a cosmic collision 10 billion years ago with another galaxy a quarter of its size, scientists stunned by their own discovery reported Wednesday.

The slow-motion crash with Gaia-Enceladus -- named after the giant of Greek mythology born of Earth and Sky -- not only provided the halo's raw material, equivalent to 600 million Suns, it also filled out our galaxy's distinctive disk, they reported in the journal Nature.

"We have basically unravelled the formation of the Milky Way," lead author Amina Helmi, an astronomer at the University of Groningen's Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, told AFP.

"The merger led to what we now call the halo of our galaxy, and -- because it was so massive -- to the puffing up of the disk that was already present at the time."

"We didn't expect to find that most halo stars have a shared origin," she added.

Large galaxies get that way by absorbing lesser ones. 

But astronomers have long argued as to whether the Milky Way bulked up on a diet of baby star clusters, or by merging with a single Big One.

Until this year, theories from either camp were supported mostly by thin reeds of speculative inference.

But that all changed with a massive data dump in April from the Gaia satellite mission.

Put into orbit by the European Space Agency in 2013, Gaia has produced an unprecedented 3-D mapping of 1.7 billion stars, including more than a billion -- one percent of the total -- in the Milky Way.

Repeated measurements by the satellite make it possible to calculate precise distances, and the velocities with which each star is streaking through the Universe.

- Crashing galaxies on rewind -

Looking for traces of galactic mergers with the Milky Way's halo, the researchers found to their surprise that most of its stars were from the same immediate family.

"The chemical signature was clearly different from the 'native' Milky Way stars," Helmi said.

"And they are a fairly homogenous group, which indicates they share a common origin."

Adding in measurements across the light spectrum, the researchers were able to reconstruct in three dimensions the precise motions of the invading stars over time.

"Playing these videos backwards allows astronomers to study how our galaxy was assembled, and how it has evolved," noted Kim Venn, an astronomer at the University of Victoria in Canada, commenting on the study.

Helmi and colleagues calculated that the merger occurred 10 billion years ago, some 3.8 billion years after the Big Bang jump-started the Universe into existence.

The team named the galaxy that melded with the Milky Way Enceladus -- progeny of Gaia, goddess of Earth, and Uranus, god of the sky -- because the giant was said to have caused earthquakes after being buried under Mount Etna, much in the way the rogue galaxy unsettled and resculpted the Milky Way.

The Gaia satellite gathers data on 100,000 stars per minute, taking some 500 million measurements per day. Its first map was published in September 2016, based on a year's worth of observations of about 1.15 billion stars.

Some stars have been measured more tha 70 times as the satellite -- circling the Sun as it orbits Earth -- continuously scans the galaxy.

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Mercury mission to explore origin of solar system

PARIS- Is Mercury's core liquid or solid, and why -- on the smallest planet in our solar system -- is it so big? What can the planet closest to the Sun tell us about how our solar system came into being?

An unmanned European-Japanese space mission, dubbed BepiColombo, blasted off early Saturday morning from French Guiana, to probe these and other mysteries.

"BepiColombo is coming like a white knight with better and more precise data," said Alain Doressoundiram, an astronomer at the Paris Observatory.

"To understand how Earth was formed, we need to understand how all rocky planets formed," including Venus and Mars, he told AFP. "Mercury stands apart and we don't know why."

First, however, the suite of instruments on board the Ariane 5 rocket will have to travel seven years and nine million kilometers to reach their destination.

In a statement after the launch, ArianeGroup said the satellite had successfully escaped Earth's gravity field and was beginning its long journey where it will reach speeds of up to 40,000 kilometers an hour.

According to Pierre Bousquet, an engineer at France's National Centre for Space Research and head of the French team contributing to the mission, Mercury is "abnormally small," leading to speculation that it survived a massive collision in its youth.

"A huge crater visible on its surface could be the scar left over from that encounter," Bousquet told AFP. Finding out if this is true is on BepiColombo's "to do" list.

GOING HOT AND COLD

This scenario would explain why Mercury's core accounts for a whopping 55 percent of its mass, compared to 30 percent for Earth.

Mercury is also the only rocky planet orbiting the Sun beside our own to have a magnetic field.

Magnetic fields are generated by a liquid core but given its size, Mercury's should have grown cold and solid by now, as did Mars.

This anomaly might be due to some feature of the core's composition, something BepiColombo's instruments will measure with much greater precision than has been possible so far.

On its surface, Mercury is a planet of extremes, vacillating between hot days of about 430 degrees Celsius to super-frosty nights of minus 180 C.

Those days and nights last nearly three Earth months each.

Earlier missions have detected evidence of ice in the deepest recesses of the planet's polar craters.

Scientists speculate that this may have accumulated from comets crashing onto Mercury's surface.

"If the presence of ice is confirmed, it means that some of those water samples date back nearly to the origin of the solar system," Doressoundiram said.

LASHED BY SOLAR WINDS

Mercury is 58 million kilometers from the sun, nearly three times closer than Earth.

"The planet is whipped by solar winds," a constant torrent of ionised particles bombarding the surface at 500 kilometres per second, said Bousquet.

The scientists will be able to study the impact of these winds -- 10 times stronger than the ones hitting Earth's atmosphere -- on Mercury's magnetic field.

The BepiColombo mission will deploy two spacecraft. The Mercury Planet Orbiter, built by ESA, will investigate planet's surface and interior composition.

The Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, made by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, will study the region of space around the planet that is influenced by its magnetic field.

The mission will also look for tectonic activity, and seek to understand why spectroscopic observations show no iron even if it is thought to be one of the planet's major component elements.

Compared to Mars, Venus, and Saturn, Mercury has barely been explored. Only two spacecraft have ever paid it a visit.

NASA's Mariner 10 did three flybys in 1974 and 1975, providing the first up-close images. More than 30 years later, NASA's Messenger did the same, before settling into orbit around Mercury in 2011.

The new mission is named after Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo, a brilliant Italian mathematician and engineer who first understood the relationship between Mercury’s rotation and orbit.

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British scientist Stephen Hawking dead at age 76

Renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking has died at age 76, a family spokesman said Wednesday.

"We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today," professor Hawking's children, Lucy, Robert, and Tim said in a statement carried by Britain's Press Association news agency.


"He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years."

Hawking was Britain's most famous modern day scientist, a genius who dedicated his life to unlocking the secrets of the Universe.

Born on January 8, 1942 -- 300 years to the day after the death of the father of modern science, Galileo Galilei -- he believed science was his destiny.

But fate also dealt Hawking a cruel hand.

Most of his life was spent in a wheelchair crippled by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a form of motor neurone disease that attacks the nerves controlling voluntary movement.

Remarkably, Hawking defied predictions he would only live for a few years, overcoming its debilitating effects on his mobility and speech that left him paralyzed and able to communicate only via a computer speech synthesizer.

"I am quite often asked: how do you feel about having ALS?" he once wrote. "The answer is, not a lot."

"I try to lead as normal a life as possible, and not think about my condition, or regret the things it prevents me from doing, which are not that many."

Stephen William Hawking, though, was far from normal.

Inside the shell of his increasingly useless body was a razor-sharp mind, fascinated by the nature of the Universe, how it was formed and how it might end.

"My goal is simple," he once said. "It is complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all."

Much of that work centered on bringing together relativity -- the nature of space and time -- and quantum theory -- how the smallest particles in the Universe behave -- to explain the creation of the Universe and how it is governed.

LIFE ON EARTH AT RISK

In 1974, he became one of the youngest fellows of Britain's most prestigious scientific body, the Royal Society, at the age of 32.

In 1979 he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, where he had moved from Oxford University to study theoretical astronomy and cosmology.

A previous holder of the prestigious post was the 17th-century British scientist Isaac Newton.

Hawking eventually put Newton's gravitational theories to the test in 2007 when, aged 65, he went on a weightless flight in the United States as a prelude to a hoped-for sub-orbital spaceflight.

Characteristically, he did not see the trip as a mere birthday present.

Instead, he said he wanted to show that disability was no bar to achievement and to encourage interest in space, where he believed humankind's destiny lay.

"I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space," he said.

"I believe life on Earth is at an ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers."

More recently he said artificial intelligence (AI) could contribute to the eradication of disease and poverty, while warning of its potential dangers.

"In short, success in creating AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilisation.

"Alongside the benefits, AI will also bring dangers, like powerful autonomous weapons, or new ways for the few to oppress the many," Hawking said in 2016, at the opening of a new AI research center at Cambridge University.

POP CULTURE AND POLITICS

Hawking's genius brought him global fame and he become known as a witty communicator dedicated to bringing science to a wider audience.

His 1988 book "A Brief History of Time" sought to explain to non-scientists the fundamental theories of the universe and it became an international bestseller, bringing him global acclaim.

It was followed in 2001 by "The Universe in a Nutshell".

In 2007, Hawking published a children's book, "George's Secret Key to the Universe", with his daughter, Lucy, seeking to explain the workings of the solar system, asteroids, his pet subject of black holes and other celestial bodies.

Hawking also moved into popular culture, with cameos in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and "The Simpsons", while his voice appeared in Pink Floyd songs.

Beyond scientific debate Hawking also weighed into politics, describing Donald Trump as "a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator" ahead of his election as US president.

Hawking also warned Britain ahead of the Brexit referendum in 2016 against leaving the European Union: "Gone are the days when we could stand on our own against the world."

MAKING THE MOST OF EVERY MINUTE

Hawking first married Jane Wilde in 1965 and had three children. The couple split after 25 years and he married his former nurse, Elaine Mason, but the union broke down amid allegations, denied by him, of abuse.

The love story between Hawking and Wilde was retold in the 2014 film "The Theory of Everything", which won Britain's Eddie Redmayne the best actor Oscar for his portrayal of the scientist.

The Oscar triumph was celebrated by Hawking, who has reportedly said there were moments watching the film when he thought he was watching himself.

He was also the subject of a 2013 documentary, "Hawking", in which he reflected on his life: "Because every day could be my last, I have the desire to make the most of each and every minute."

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Coral reefs at risk of dissolving as oceans get more acidic: study

OSLO - Coral reefs could start to dissolve before 2100 as man-made climate change drives acidification of the oceans, scientists said on Thursday.

Acidification will threaten sediments that are building blocks for reefs. Corals already face risks from ocean temperatures, pollution and overfishing.

"Coral reefs will transition to net dissolving before end of century," the Australian-led team of scientists wrote in the U.S. journal Science. "Net dissolving" means reefs would lose more material than they gain from the growth of corals.

Carbon dioxide, the main man-made greenhouse gas, forms a weak acid in water and threatens to dissolve the reef sediments, made from broken down bits of corals and other carbonate organisms that accumulate over thousands of years, it said.

The sediments are 10 times more vulnerable to acidification than the tiny coral animals that also extract chemicals directly from the sea water to build stony skeletons that form reefs, the study said.

Coral animals will be able to keep growing and replenish reefs long after sandy sediments start to dissolve, lead author Bradley Eyre, of Southern Cross University, told Reuters.

"This probably reflects the corals' ability to modify their environment and partially adapt to ocean acidification whereas the dissolution of sands is a geo-chemical process that cannot adapt," he wrote in an e-mail.

The report said it was "unknown if the whole reef will erode once the sediments become net dissolving" and whether reefs "will experience catastrophic destruction" or merely a slow erosion.

Some reef sediments were already starting to dissolve, such as at Kaneohe Bay in Hawaii, where other pollutants were contributing.

Eyre said it was unclear if the dissolution of sediments could be a long-term threat to entire islands, from the Pacific to the Caribbean. Other studies say that deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions can limit acidification.

Most studies show that acidification will be overwhelmingly bad for ocean life, also threatening creatures such as oysters, lobsters and crabs. Another study on Thursday, however, found that it might help the growth of some plants.

"An increase of carbon dioxide in the ocean theoretically could stimulate higher growth of kelp and seaweeds," Kasper Hancke, a biologist at the Norwegian Institute for Water Research, wrote in a statement.

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John Young, who set records in space with NASA, is dead at 87

WASHINGTON - John Young, a legendary US astronaut who went into space 6 times, orbited the moon and then walked on its craggy surface, has died, NASA announced Saturday.

He was 87 and died late Friday of complications from pneumonia, the space agency said. He lived in a Houston suburb just minutes from the NASA Space Center.

"NASA and the world have lost a pioneer," agency administrator Robert Lightfoot said in a statement. "We will stand on his shoulders as we look toward the next human frontier."

Young was a man of many firsts: the only astronaut to fly in the Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle programs (and the first to command a shuttle flight); and the first to fly into space six times.

He once held the world record for total time spent in space, NASA said.

'BOLDEST FIGHT IN HISTORY' 

Young joined Gus Grissom on the Gemini 3 mission, then commanded the first space shuttle mission in what some people called "the boldest test flight in history."

He commanded Gemini 10, the first mission to rendezvous with two other spacecraft during a single flight.

Young orbited the moon in Apollo 10, and made a lunar landing with Apollo 16. "In an iconic display of test pilot 'cool,' he landed the space shuttle (STS-9) with a fire in the back end," NASA said.

"He was in every way the 'astronaut's astronaut,'" Lightfoot said. But he was also described as a savvy engineer and a "test pilot's test pilot."

While in the navy, Young set world records for the fastest ascension from a standing start in an F-4 Phantom II jet.

Once, during an air-to-air missile test, Young and another pilot approached each other's aircraft at a potentially calamitous speed of Mach 3 (2,300 miles per hour, or 3,700 kilometers per hour), according to Young's website.

"I got a telegram from the chief of naval operations," Young said in his understated way, "asking me not to do this any more."

Fellow astronaut Charles Bolden called Young and Robert "Hoot" Gibson the two best pilots he had ever known.

"Never met two people like them," he said. "Everyone else gets into an airplane; John and Hoot wear their airplane. They're just awesome."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

SpaceX's Elon Musk to launch his own car into deep space

MIAMI - SpaceX confirmed Wednesday its CEO Elon Musk plans to blast his cherry red electric car off toward the Red Planet when the company's Falcon Heavy rocket launches for the first time next month.

Many wondered if Musk was joking last week when he tweeted his plans for the Falcon Heavy's inaugural payload to be his "midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing Space Oddity," the classic song by the late David Bowie.

"Destination is Mars orbit. Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn't blow up on ascent," the famed space enthusiast and Internet tycoon said on Twitter on Friday.

But SpaceX confirmed to AFP on Wednesday that the plan is for real.

Touted as the "world's most powerful rocket," the Falcon Heavy is designed to one day carry crew and supplies to deep space destinations such as the Moon and Mars.

It can propel 119,000 pounds (54 metric tons) -- or the same as a fully loaded Boeing 737 jet -- into orbit, twice the load of the Delta IV Heavy, currently the biggest rocket in operation.

The Saturn V moon rocket, which last flew in 1973, was more powerful.

There were also two bigger rockets during the Soviet era -- the N1 which was the most powerful first stage ever built, though it failed to launch successfully; and Energia which only launched twice.

The Falcon Heavy is essentially three of the California-based company's Falcon 9 rockets put together, with 27 Merlin engines instead of nine.

SpaceX says it will cost a third of what it costs to launch the Delta IV.

A date has not yet been set for the Falcon Heavy launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, which has been delayed several times -- but SpaceX says it should happen in January 2018.

According to astronomer and blogger Phil Plait, who was able to reach Musk for more details about the plan, the car won't be sent into orbit around Mars, but will enter "an orbit around the Sun that takes it as close to the Sun as Earth and as far out as Mars."

Other items may be added to the payload as well.

"Just bear in mind that there is a good chance this monster rocket blows up, so I wouldn't put anything of irreplaceable sentimental value on it," Musk was quoted as saying.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

US scientists to protest Trump policies at Earth Day rally in Washington

WASHINGTON — US scientists are set to stage an unprecedented protest on Saturday, a March for Science provoked by steep cuts President Donald Trump has proposed for science and research budgets, and growing disregard for evidence-based knowledge.

The march in Washington, timed to coincide with the Earth Day environmental event, will put Trump's questioning of climate change and proposed cuts to federal science programs at center stage.

Demonstrations are also scheduled in US cities including San Francisco, along with smaller towns like Dillingham, Alaska. Overseas, people are due to rally in support of science from Australia to Brazil.

Participants say the Washington march will be nonpartisan and marks a new frontier for scientists more accustomed to laboratories and classrooms than activism in the streets.

"It has dawned on some of them it is time to speak up," Rush Holt, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, told reporters on a conference call this week. "I wouldn't say that it is fundamentally because of Donald Trump, but there's no question that there's been concern in recent months about all sorts of things."

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump has called climate change a hoax. His administration is mulling withdrawing from the so-called Paris Agreement aimed at reducing global emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Trump's proposed 2018 budget calls for deep spending cuts by government science agencies, including a 31% reduction for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Rally organizers are also worried by what they see as growing skepticism from politicians and others on topics such as vaccinations, genetically modified organisms and evolution.

"It's really the age-old debate of the rational view of the universe against the irrational view of the universe," Elias Zerhouni, former director of the National Institutes of Health, said on the conference call.

Guests at the Washington event will include television personality Bill Nye "the Science Guy," former White House technology aide Megan Smith and Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician who helped expose the lead water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

But some questioned whether scientists should play a political role, and whether the march would change the minds of Trump, his top aides, or skeptical voters.

"We need to go to county fairs, and we need to personalize the scientific issues we care about," said geologist Rob Young, a professor at North Carolina's Western Carolina University.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Sex exists to avoid disease, study shows

From an evolutionary perspective, sexual reproduction could be seen as a non-starter.

Compared to cloning, which also exists in Nature, it's a major waste of time and energy.

Think of the ungainly, preening peacock -- an easy snack for tigers and wild dogs -- strutting his stuff to impress the ladies.

Even without predators, sex and its attendant rituals can be dangerous: when stags butt heads or alpha-male lions fight for mating rights, it does not always end well.

Some animals and plants -- starfish, bananas, to name two -- reproduce asexually. Even a few birds and bees do it solo, Cole Porter be damned.

Others, like the Komodo dragon, can work it either way, though asexually produced Komodo babies -- produced by their mothers -- are not clones.

In short, without males in the picture the business of reproducing is faster and less fraught.

And yet, sex remains by far the dominant means by which the world's fauna and flora pass on genes to future generations, ensuring the survival of the species.

"One of the oldest questions in evolutionary biology is, why does sex exist?" said Stuart Auld, a biologist at the University of Stirling in Scotland.

Darwin's laws of natural selection dictate that doing it the hard way -- sex rather than cloning, in this case -- must confer some major, if hidden, advantages.

Granted, sexual reproduction fuels genetic variation, which boosts the likelihood that offspring in the wild will have the genetic makeup to thrive in an ever-changing environment.

By contrast, clones do not vary, and so if the environment deteriorates, a clonal mother will produce offspring that lack the genes they need to succeed.

'Twofold cost of sex'

"But sex needs to be over twice as efficient as cloning to outweigh its costs," Auld told AFP.

"If sex is to be favored by natural selection, a sexual mother needs to either produce twice as many offspring as an asexual mother, or produce offspring that are twice as good."

Biologists have long agreed that the enhanced ability to fight off disease was a major advantage of the genetic changes that come with sexual reproduction.

But constructing an experiment to confirm this has always proved difficult: how do you compare the costs and benefits of sexual strategies in different species?

To get around that "apples and oranges" problem, Auld and two colleagues used an organism -- the humble waterflea -- that can reproduce both ways.

"By comparing clonal and sexual daughters from the same mothers, we found sexually produced offspring get less sick," Auld said.

The ever-present need to evade disease, it turned out, explains why sex persists in the natural world in spite of the high "costs" that come with it, he explained.

Parasites and their hosts are in a constant tug-of-war, each evolving and adapting to the other, one attacking immune defenses and the other rebuilding them.

Cloning offers fewer chances for genetic changes in the host that can rise to that challenge.

But sexual reproduction -- with a new genetic variations coming into the mix with each generation -- offers more opportunities to fight back against pathogens.

The findings were published in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

New photos reveal Pluto's stunning geological diversity: NASA

New, high-resolution images of the surface of Pluto beamed from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft reveal unparalleled geographical variety -- from soaring mountains to sand dunes to frozen ice floes, scientists said Saturday.

"Pluto is showing us a diversity of landforms and complexity of processes that rival anything we've seen in the solar system," said Alan Stern, principal investigator with the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who is playing a key role analyzing data sent by the probe.

"If an artist had painted this Pluto before our flyby, I probably would have called it over the top -- but that's what is actually there," he said.

Long considered the farthest planet from the Sun before it was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006, Pluto has never before been explored.

In July, New Horizons -- a nuclear powered spacecraft about the size of a baby grand piano -- became the first spaceship to pass by Pluto.

By doing so, the unmanned probe has for the first time given scientists the chance to obtain close-up images from the distant and complex dwarf planet.

The stunning pictures, displaying chaotically jumbled mountains and other dramatic geographical features, is somewhat reminiscent of the helter-skelter terrain of Jupiter's icy moon Europa, NASA scientists said.

New Horizon began a yearlong download of new images and other data several days ago.

The pictures downloaded this past week have more than doubled the amount of Pluto's surface seen, at resolutions of about 400 meters (440 yards) per pixel.

NASA said New Horizons will continue to send data back to Earth until late next year.

The space agency also said that next week, the probe will beam images of Pluto's moons Charon, Nix, and Hydra.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

One year and counting: Mars isolation experiment begins

MIAMI, United States - Six people shut themselves inside a dome for a year in Hawaii on Friday, in the longest US isolation experiment aimed at helping NASA prepare for a pioneering journey to Mars.

The crew includes a French astrobiologist, a German physicist and four Americans -- a pilot, an architect, a doctor/journalist and a soil scientist.

They are based on a barren, northern slope of Mauna Loa, living inside a dome that is 36 feet (11 meters) in diameter and 20 feet tall.

In a place with no animals and little vegetation around, they closed themselves in at 3:00 pm Hawaii time (0100 GMT Saturday), marking the official start to the 12-month mission.

The men and women have their own small rooms, with space for a sleeping cot and desk, and will spend their days eating food like powdered cheese and canned tuna, only going outside if dressed in a spacesuit, and having limited access to the Internet.

So what kind of person wants to spend a year this way?

Crew member Sheyna Gifford described the team as "six people who want to change the world by making it possible for people to leave it at will," she wrote on her blog, LivefromMars.life.

Architect Tristan Bassingthwaighte said he will be "studying architectural methods for creating a more habitable environment and increasing our capability to live in the extreme environments of Earth and other worlds," according to his LinkedIn page.

"Hoping to learn a lot!" he added.

- Pioneer troubles -

Any astronauts that go to Mars are facing a trip that would last far longer than the six months that humans typically spend at the orbiting International Space Station.

NASA's current technology can send a robotic mission to the Red Planet in eight months, and the space agency estimates that a human mission would take between one and three years.

With all that time spent in a cramped space without access to fresh air, food, or privacy, conflicts are certain to occur.

The US space agency is studying how these scenarios play out on Earth -- in a program called Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) -- before pressing on toward Mars, which NASA hopes to reach sometime in the 2030s.

The first HI-SEAS experiment involved studies about cooking on Mars and was followed by a four-month and an eight-month co-habitation mission.

NASA is spending $1.2 million on these simulations and has just received funding of another $1 million for three more in the coming years, according to principal investigator Kim Binsted.

"That is very cheap for space research," she told AFP by phone from Hawaii.

"It is really inexpensive compared to the cost of a space mission going wrong."

Other simulation experiments have taken place under the ocean off the Florida coast, in Antarctica and in Russia, where a 520-day Mars experiment was carried out in 2011.

- Conflict resolution -

Binsted said that during the eight-month co-habitation mission, which ended earlier this year, conflicts did arise.

She said she could not go into detail about the nature of them without breaching confidentiality of the crew.

But the crew was able to work through their problems, she said.

"I think one of the lessons is that you really can't prevent interpersonal conflicts. It is going to happen over these long-duration missions, even with the very best people," she told AFP.

"But what you can do is help people be resilient so they respond well to the problems and can resolve them and continue to perform well as a team."

Binsted said the first scientific results from the missions should be made public about a year from now.

Jocelyn Dunn, a crew member from the previous mission, said she came to love the inside jokes among the crew, doing daily workouts, and learning to cook things like bagels and pizza dough with the ingredients on hand.

"I guess I got a taste of marriage, albeit a hexagon of relationships rather than a dyad," she wrote on her blog.

Then, just days after the mission ended in mid-June, she described the joy of being "on Earth" again, eating fresh vegetables, using a knife to cut meat, swimming, and drinking soda and champagne.

"I couldn't believe how much I had missed the flavors and textures of a juicy steak."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Hawking launches biggest-ever search for alien life

British cosmologist Stephen Hawking on Monday launched the biggest-ever search for intelligent extraterrestrial life in a $100-million (92-million-euro), 10-year project to scan the heavens.

Russian Silicon Valley entrepreneur Yuri Milner, who is funding the Breakthrough Listen initiative, said it would be the most intensive scientific search ever undertaken for signs of alien civilisation.

"In an infinite universe, there must be other occurrences of life," Hawking said at the launch event at the Royal Society science academy in London.

"Somewhere in the cosmos, perhaps, intelligent life may be watching.

"Either way, there is no bigger question. It's time to commit to finding the answer, to search for life beyond Earth.

"It is important for us to know if we are alone in the dark."

The project will use some of the biggest telescopes on Earth, searching far deeper into the universe than before for radio and laser signals.

"Breakthrough Listen takes the search for intelligent life in the universe to a completely new level," said Milner, a former physicist.

He said the scan would collect more data in one day than a year of any previous search, tracking the million closest stars, the centre of our Milky Way galaxy and the 100 closest galaxies.

Earth's telescopes would be able to detect a signal from similarly-advanced technology sent from the centre of the Milky Way.

"We don't need to assume that civilization is way more developed than we are," Milner said.

'Huge gamble, colossal pay-off'

Martin Rees, Britain's astronomer royal and one of the project leaders, said modern technology allowed much more sensitive searches than ever before, though he cautioned against expectations of finding intelligent alien life.

"It's a huge gamble, of course, but the pay-off would be so colossal... even if the chance of success is small," the astrophysicist said.

However, the possibility of finding life had effectively risen a billionfold through the identification of billions of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, he said.

"Is there life out there? We may not answer it but this gives a bigger chance that it may be answered in our lifetime," he said.

The programme will be 50 times more sensitive than previous searches, and cover 10 times more of the sky, experts said.

It will scan at least five times more of the radio spectrum, and 100 times faster, while in tandem undertake the deepest and broadest-ever search for optical laser transmissions.

All the data will be publicly available, allowing anyone interested to do their own trawling.

Debate over sending messages

The project is allied with the Breakthrough Message initiative, a global competition with a maximum $1 million prize pot to come up with the best message humans could send into the void.

However, there is no commitment to send any such message, as experts are torn on the wisdom and ethics of doing so.

Frank Drake, who sent messages into space in the 1970s, said: "We know there are people who are afraid that sending is going to endanger us."

Hawking has warned in the past about the risks of making contact with other civilisations.

"A civilisation reading one of our messages could be billions of years ahead," the 73-year-old mastermind said.

"If so, they will be vastly more powerful and may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria."

However, Rees said: "I suggest they know we're here already."

Drake said it could take at least 200 years before even the possibility of a reply to "shot in the dark" messages beamed into space.

By waiting to find civilisation, we could then tailor a "useful message" to send them.

Ann Druyan, who sent music on the 1970s Voyager probe launches, said the first thing to establish would be a means of communication and an intention to learn.

"We'd want to know their history, social forms, how they understand the origins of the universe," she said, but as for a first message, "'Hello' would be right up there".

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com