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Top Story:  Betelgeuse’s mysterious dimming.

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Accessed on 13 August 2020, 1924 UTC.

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ASTRONOMY

Betelgeuse’s Mysterious Dimming Likely Caused by Huge Outburst

This artist’s impression was generated using an image of Betelgeuse from 2019 taken with the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Image credit: ESO / NASA / ESA / Hubble / M. Kornmesser.The red supergiant Betelgeuse is one of the brightest stars in the night sky and appears even more luminous because it is so close to Earth, only 650 light-years away. But the star also periodically changes in brightness, which was first noted in the 1830s by the British astronomer John Herschel. Betelgeuse experienced an unexpected dimming during December 2019 and the first quarter of 2020, reaching…

SPACE EXPLORATION

Dwarf Planet Ceres is Water-Rich World, New Research Suggests

This false-color image shows the dwarf planet Ceres. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA.High-resolution observations from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft of mysterious bright spots (faculae) in Occator crater on the dwarf planet Ceres suggest the existence of a brine reservoir — which is about 40 km (25 miles) deep and hundreds of km wide — that emerged to the surface through long-lived cryovolcanic activity as a consequence of the impact that created the crater. This false-color…

ARCHAEOLOGY

Israeli Archaeologists Unearth 2,700-Year-Old Administrative Storage Center

‘To the King’ two-winged seal impression. Image credit: Yaniv Berman, Israel Antiquities Authority.A team of archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) has uncovered the ruins of an important administrative storage center from the 8th-7th centuries BCE. ‘To the King’ two-winged seal impression. Image credit: Yaniv Berman, Israel Antiquities Authority. The team, headed by IAA archaeologists Neria Sapir and Nathan Ben-Ari, unearthed an unusually large structure built of concentric…

PALEONTOLOGY

New Carnivorous Dinosaur Unearthed on Isle of Wight

An artist’s impression of Vectaerovenator inopinatus’ final moments. Image credit: Trudie Wilson.A new genus and species of theropod dinosaur from the Cretaceous period has been identified from bones found on the Isle of Wight, the United Kingdom. An artist’s impression of Vectaerovenator inopinatus’ final moments. Image credit: Trudie Wilson. The newly-discovered dinosaur roamed the Earth approximately 115 million years ago (Cretaceous period). It belongs to Tetanurae, a group that includes…

BIOLOGY

Researchers Discover New Type of Taste Receptor Cells

Most taste cells selectively respond to a specific stimulus type while broadly responsive cells respond to multiple taste qualities. Image credit: Jhanna Flora / Kathryn Medler.Scientists have discovered a new population of taste cells that can detect multiple types of stimuli, including chemicals from different taste qualities. Most taste cells selectively respond to a specific stimulus type while broadly responsive cells respond to multiple taste qualities. Image credit: Jhanna Flora / Kathryn Medler. Taste buds in the mouth are critical to our survival and help us to…

PHYSICS

Photon Collisions Produce Pairs of Weak-Force Carriers

A 2018 ATLAS event display consistent with the production of a pair of W bosons from two photons, where the W bosons decay into a muon and an electron (visible in the detector) and neutrinos (not detected). The muon path (red line) and electron path (yellow line) are shown. The electron deposits its energy in the electromagnetic calorimeter (yellow blocks). The many particles reconstructed in the Inner Detector are shown in orange. Top left corner shows that these particles do not originate from the same interaction and are thus attributed to additional proton-proton interactions. Image credit: ATLAS Collaboration / CERN.Physicists from the ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have observed production of W bosons, elementary particles that carry the weak force, from photons colliding with photons. This new result confirms one of the main predictions of electroweak theory — that force carriers can interact with themselves — and provides new ways to probe it. A…

GENETICS

Denisovans Interbred with Mysterious Archaic Hominin: Study

Xu et al find genetic proof of interbreeding between an unknown ancient hominin and the ancestors of modern-day Africans. Image credit: Bob Wilder, University at Buffalo.In a new study published in the journal PLoS Genetics, researchers analyzed the genomes of two Neanderthals, a Denisovan, and two African humans; and found that 1% of the Denisovan genome was introgressed from an unknown archaic hominin ancestor; about 15% of these archaic regions were, in turn, introgressed into modern humans and continue to exist in the genomes of people alive today. Hubisz et…

GEOLOGY

Coal-Burning Contributed to End-Permian Mass Extinction

The discovery of a spike of mercury in 252-million-year-old rock at locations around the world gives evidence for the prevailing theory that volcanic eruptions caused the end-Permian extinction. Image credit: Margaret Weiner / University of Cincinnati Creative Services.An international team of geologists has found the first direct evidence that volcanic eruptions in the southern part of the Siberian Traps region 252 million years ago burned large volumes of coal and vegetation. Elkins-Tanton et al demonstrate that the volume and composition of organic matter interacting with magmas in the Siberian Traps region may explain the global carbon isotope signal and may…

OTHER SCIENCES

Geoscientists Record ‘Boomerang’ Earthquake in Atlantic Ocean

The 2016 7.1 earthquake on the Romanche Fracture Zone in the equatorial Atlantic. The map location is given by the red rectangle on the inset globe. Image credit: Hicks et al, doi: 10.1038/s41561-020-0619-9.Earthquakes occur when rocks suddenly break on a fault — a boundary between two blocks or plates. During large earthquakes, the breaking of rock can spread down the fault line. Now, geoscientists have recorded a ‘boomerang’ earthquake in the equatorial Atlantic, where the rupture initially spreads away from initial break but then turns and runs back the other way at higher speeds. The 2016…

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Until next time,

Russ Roberts (https://atomic-temporary-155977078.wpcomstaging.com and https://hawaiisciencedaily.com)

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