Alive

Monumental Ancient Structure in Israel

Beit Guvrin, Israel. Courtesy of Wikimedia commons.

For decades, archeologists in Israel believed they had discovered an ancient synagogue on a road to Beit Guvrin National Park. But new research suggests the structure was actually a Roman temple.


This is the second such time a building excavated at the site was wrongly identified as a synagogue, as experts have worked to better understand the history of the region and the pagan populations that once called it home.


The edifice was discovered in 1991 in central Israel, according to Haaretz. Though the exact location hasn’t been disclosed by the country’s Nature and Parks Authority for fear of vandalism, the structure isn’t hard to spot for those who know what they’re looking for: sections of its walls can be seen sticking out from the weed-covered ground.


The summer marked the latest in a series of excavations conducted at the site since 2015. The effort led experts to upend previous theories about the building, including one, postulated in a 1991 book by archaeologist Zvi Ilan, which argued that the structure bared similarities to monumental synagogues in northern Israel from the Late Roman and Byzantine periods.


The leaders of the recent dig now believe the building was erected by the Romans in defense of the Bar Kochba revolt of 132 C.E.


“It certainly doesn’t have clear religious iconography like a menorah, for example, that would be typical of a synagogue,” Gregg Gardner, a University of British Columbia researcher who joined the excavation in 2017, told Haaretz. 

“Neither the layout of the structure nor decorations indicate it might have been a synagogue. Instead, it has several characteristics of a non-Jewish ritual complex—it has a raised paved court leading to a hall at the far end that was elevated on top of a vaulted substructure.”  READ MORE...

Into The Storm

Something is Created from Nothing

There are all sorts of conservation laws in the Universe: for energy, momentum, charge, and more. Many properties of all physical systems are conserved: where things cannot be created or destroyed.

We've learned how to create matter under specific, explicit conditions: by colliding two quanta together at high enough energies so that equal amounts of matter and antimatter can emerge, so long as E = mc² allows it to happen.

For the first time, we've managed to create particles without any collisions or precursor particles at all: through strong electromagnetic fields and the Schwinger effect. 

HERE's HOW...

Whoever said, “You can’t get something from nothing” must never have learned quantum physics. As long as you have empty space — the ultimate in physical nothingness — simply manipulating it in the right way will inevitably cause something to emerge. Collide two particles in the abyss of empty space, and sometimes additional particle-antiparticle pairs emerge. 

Take a meson and try to rip the quark away from the antiquark, and a new set of particle-antiparticle pairs will get pulled out of the empty space between them. And in theory, a strong enough electromagnetic field can rip particles and antiparticles out of the vacuum itself, even without any initial particles or antiparticles at all.

Previously, it was thought that the highest particle energies of all would be needed to produce these effects: the kind only obtainable at high-energy particle physics experiments or in extreme astrophysical environments. But in early 2022, strong enough electric fields were created in a simple laboratory setup leveraging the unique properties of graphene, enabling the spontaneous creation of particle-antiparticle pairs from nothing at all. 

The prediction that this should be possible is 70 years old: dating back to one of the founders of quantum field theory, Julian Schwinger. The Schwinger effect is now verified, and teaches us how the Universe truly makes something from nothing.  READ MORE...

Skateboard Dog

 

Chicks

 

China Discovers Moon Crystal for Nuclear Fusion Fuel

China has discovered a crystal from the Moon made of a previously unknown mineral, while also confirming that the lunar surface contains a key ingredient for nuclear fusion, a potential form of effectively limitless power that harnesses the same forces that fuel the Sun and other stars.

The crystal is part of a batch of lunar samples collected by China’s Chang’e-5 mission, which landed on the Moon in 2020, loaded up with about four pounds of rocks, and delivered them to Earth days later. After carefully sifting through the samples—which are the first Moon rocks returned to Earth since 1976—scientists at the Beijing Research Institute of Uranium Geology spotted a single crystal particle, with a diameter smaller than the width of a human hair.

The crystal is made of the novel mineral Changesite—(Y), named after the Chinese Moon goddess, Chang’e, that also inspired China’s series of lunar missions. 

It was confirmed as a new mineral on Friday by the Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification (CNMNC) of the International Mineralogical Association (IMA), according to the Chinese state-run publication Global Times.

Changesite—(Y) is the sixth new mineral to be identified in Moon samples, and the first to be discovered by China. Before China, only the U.S. and Russia could claim to have discovered a new Moon mineral. 

It is a transparent crystal that formed in a region of the northern lunar near-face that was volcanically active about 1.2 billion years ago.  READ MORE...

Descending

Quaantum Batteries Providing Instant Power

THE battery, as US comedian Demetri Martin pointed out, is one technology that we personify. “Other things stop working or they break,” he said. “But batteries – they die.” The observation is keener than it may at first appear. 

So beholden are some of us to smartphones, tablets and other digital technology, that our lives pretty much go on hold when they run out of juice. Even if it is just 30 minutes, we are apt to mourn the time lost to recharging.

If that seems like a laughable reaction, there is a serious side to this when it comes to the batteries that power electric vehicles. The fact that it usually takes hours to charge them is a major stumbling block to decarbonising transport, which is among the biggest global emitters of greenhouse gases. 

For humanity’s sake, charging times need to be slashed. Yet, with the fundamentals of battery science the same as they were half a century ago, the prospect of a drastic improvement looks slim.

Slim, but not impossible. Now, quantum physics could ride to our rescue. By leveraging the strange behaviour of subatomic particles, a quantum battery could charge itself much faster than any conventional device. As a handy bonus, the bigger a quantum battery, the better it performs. 

Although the concept is in its infancy, a recent experimental demonstration and some theoretical advances suggest that a world of uninterrupted portable power isn’t so far-fetched. One day, dead batteries could spring back to life in an instant.  READ MORE...

Fracture

Gigantic Solar Eruption

Image of the eruption obtained using the C2 instrument on NASA's SOHO spacecraft. 

(NASA SOHO)

The Sun has been up to some pretty intense shenanigans lately, but a recent eruption on the far side looks to be absolute science gold.

On the evening of September 5 GMT, an enormous coronal mass ejection (CME) was recorded exploding on the far side of the Sun, sending a radiation storm out across the Solar System. It was a type known as a halo CME, in which an expanding halo of hot gas can be seen spewing out around the entire Sun.

Sometimes this means that the CME is headed straight for Earth. However, this eruption was on the far side, so it's heading away, and we won't see any of the usual effects of a solar storm here on our home planet.

But Venus was right in the path of the oncoming storm – and with it, Solar Orbiter, a space probe jointly run by the European Space Agency and NASA that is currently near Venus after a September 4 gravity assist on its mission to take closeup observations of our home star.

This has given us the rare opportunity to observe and measure a gigantic, farside CME, something that is usually rather difficult for us to do.

"This is no run-of-the-mill event. Many science papers will be studying this for years to come," solar physicist George Ho of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory told Spaceweather.  READ MORE...

Dining Out

 

Confidence in the Truth

For the last several days, my wife and I have been living in a condo at South Myrtle Beach...  we like this condo and have booked a week or two each summer (except for the COVID shutdown) for the last 5 years.  We are very far away from the amusement area as there is too much alcohol and drugs floating around on the streets.

My wife is out on the beach as soon as the lifeguards set up the umbrellas and chairs and I usually venture out there an hour or so later and we both leave the beach around 3/4 in the afternoon.  We then get "cleaned up" and go out for dinner and a little shopping or sometimes drive around and look at the various changes that have been made since last year.

In the mornings while drinking coffee, I watch FOX News because the other networks don't publish everything that is going on...  I am continuously amazed when the Biden administration and especially Biden himself make a speech saying he has the current inflation under control...  and he would be able to do more if he did not have to follow Trump as President...

I am also amazed when Biden says that our southern borders is CLOSED and that no illegal immigration is taking place...  and, according to FOX and the videos that take and the interviews they have with local police always seem to contradict what the President is saying...  in essence, JOE BIDEN is lying and the mainstream media just don't seem to give a shit.

One of these days, all these lies are going to bite the Dems in their big ole asses...  then, people like me will be the last one laughing...

 

Windy Night

 

Rare Ancient Papyrus

Israel has acquired a previously unknown ancient papyrus bearing a Hebrew inscription dated to around 2,700 years ago that had long been in possession of a Montana resident, the country’s antiquities authority said Wednesday.

The scrap of papyrus — scarcely larger than a postage stamp with four lines of angular script — is one of just a few from the region in the Late Iron Age, archaeologists said. The Israel Antiquities Authority said it authenticated its age using radiocarbon dating, which corresponded with the age of the text’s writing style.

Joe Uziel, director of the Judean desert scrolls unit, said the matching radiocarbon date and paleographic style makes him “very certain” that it is not a modern forgery.

The papyrus, which bears the Biblical name Ishmael, was likely looted sometime in the last century from a cave in the Judean Desert, he said.

Its provenance and journey from the desert to Montana six decades ago and now to Jerusalem remain nebulous.

The antiquities authority declined to name the Montana resident but said the man’s mother obtained the artifact during a visit to what was then Jordanian-occupied east Jerusalem in 1965 and brought it to the United States.

Jordanian law that was in force at the time severely restricted the sale of antiquities and prohibited the export of artifacts without a permit from the minister of antiquities. It wasn’t clear whether the woman possessed such authorization.  READ MORE...

Avatar

 

Changing the Air Chemistry Around Us

Computer modeling of OH reactivity (L) and concentration (R). (Zannoni et al., Science, 2022)

There are all kinds of pollutants in the air around us. Outdoors, these can be washed away through the falling rain, and the oxidation that happens after ultraviolet light from the Sun interacts with ozone and water vapor.

So, what happens indoors?
As a new study shows, there's also some oxidation going on indoors too: the chemical cleaning that occurs via these hydroxyl (OH) radicals – short-lived reactive species whose job is to oxidize other molecules – happens through a combination of ozone leaking in from the outside, and from the oxidation fields that we create around ourselves.

In some scenarios, levels of OH radicals indoors are comparable to daytime outdoor levels, scientists have found. In other words, we're walking, breathing, chemical reaction machines, which has implications for indoor air quality and human health.

"The discovery that we humans are not only a source of reactive chemicals, but we are also able to transform these chemicals ourselves was very surprising to us," says atmospheric chemist Nora Zannoni from the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate in Italy.  READ MORE...

Around and Around

Massive Triple Star System Detected

Artist’s interpretation of HD 98800, a quadruple-star system located 150 light-years away in the constellation TW Hydrae. Bin Liu and Alejandro Vigna-Gomez suggest that the more massive 

tertiary-star system TIC 470710327 could have started in a similar configuration – two binary 

systems with one of them eventually merging into one, bigger star. TIC 470710327 is located 

very close to “Cassiopeia”. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

Compact, massive triple star system detected by University of Copenhagen researchers.

Earlier this year, researchers revealed the discovery of an extraordinarily compact “one-of-a-kind” system of three stars. A partnership between two young researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen is currently focusing on how this unusual combination of a binary set of stars and a revolving larger star can form.

Tertiary star formation on a massive scale
The star system is made up of a binary set of stars, two stars that orbit each other, and one more massive star that orbits the binary.

“As far as we know, it is the first of its kind ever detected”, Alejandro Vigna-Gomez says. “We know of many tertiary star systems (three star systems), but they are typically significantly less massive. 

The massive stars in this triple are very close together – it is a compact system. The orbital period of the binary (~1 d) is the same as that of the rotation of Earth (1 day). The combined mass of the two of them is twelve times the mass of our Sun – so rather big stars. 

The tertiary star is approximately 16 times the mass of our Sun, so even bigger! The inner orbit is circular in shape with close to six revolutions of the tertiary star around the binary per year. 

Pretty fast, when you consider the size of them – unsurprisingly, the system is very luminous, so at first they were detected as a stellar binary”.  READ MORE...

Ocean Waves