The push to set up a "Lunar Coordinate Time" is gaining traction. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is the latest organization to call for the Moon to have its own standard clock time in a bid to coordinate future lunar missions.A motion to establish a standard Lunar Celestial Reference System and Lunar Coordinate Time was passed by the IAU on August 15 at their XXXII General Assembly in Cape Town, South Africa. A follow-up resolution said the new time zone should be reached by “international agreement".“As we leave Cape Town and reflect on the legacy of this event, let us remember that together we are pushing the frontiers of astronomical knowledge in a collective effort to better understand the Universe we live in, our origins and our future, and to make the world a better place for all,” Willy Benz, incoming President of the IAU, said in a statement.There’s currently no agreed time zone on the Moon – and that's a growing problem. Uncrewed missions typically use the time zone of the craft's country of origin, while the crewed Apollo missions from 1968 to 1972 used Ground Elapsed Time, counting from the moment of launch.With humans (hopefully) set to return to the Moon in the near future, plus an increasing number of nations and private companies launching space missions, the need to coordinate the Moon with a unified clock is mounting. Time dilation throws another spanner into the works. Due to general and special relativity, the duration of a second on the Moon will appear distorted to an observer on Earth because there’s less gravity on the lunar surface and, therefore, time flows faster. Time on the Moon's surface ticks an average of 57.5 microseconds per Earth-day faster than it does on our planet's surface. This may seem miniscule, but it could make a difference when highly precise experiments are being conducted. Furthermore, these tiny differences can add up; if an astronaut spends 50 years on the Moon, they would be around 1 second older than if they had stayed on Earth.Discussions about a "Coordinated Lunar Time" have been building in recent times. Back in April 2024, the White House directed NASA and other agencies to put together a plan to establish a new Moon time system by the end of 2026.While it’s still uncertain how the world might go about doing this, it's apparent that this is the time to do so.“I think that the community has realized that this needs to be done. And this is the beginning,” Bijunath Patla, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, told the Associated Press.

Citizen scientists working on the hunt for the hypothetical Planet 9 that should lurk at the edge of the Solar System have instead found a cosmic object moving so fast that it will one day leave the Milky Way. It's the first object with the mass of a small star found moving at this speed.First spotted by Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 contributors Martin Kabatnik, Thomas P. Bickle, and Dan Caselden a few years ago using data from NASA's WISE mission that mapped the sky in infrared, it's thought the object may be a brown dwarf, star-like objects that never get massive enough to begin fusing hydrogen at their core. Over 4,000 brown dwarfs have been discovered by amateur astronomers during this program but none of them have been as fast as this. It’s moving at about 1.6 million kilometers (1 million miles) per hour.“I can’t describe the level of excitement,” Kabatnik, from Nuremberg, Germany, who is a co-author on a new paper describing the discovery, said in a statement. “When I first saw how fast it was moving, I was convinced it must have been reported already.”The project allows citizen scientists to pore through WISE data, picking interesting objects to follow up on. WISE was retired in 2011, and its subsequent asteroid-hunting iteration NEOWISE retired recently too (you can see its last image here). The WISE data combined with the ground follow-up has helped astronomers to characterize this unusual object. Known as CWISE J124909.08+362116.0, it is either a brown dwarf or a very low-mass star and it is moving so fast our galaxy won’t be able to hold on to it.But what would give a brown dwarf such a kick? The team has two possible explanations. One is that the object was in a binary system with a white dwarf. The companion stole enough material to go supernova, giving it a powerful hit and sending CWISE J1249 flying away.The other explanation is that the object was in a globular cluster of stars and it might have interacted with a pair of binary black holes. It survived the encounter unscathed but it was thrown out of the cluster at high speed and at some point, it will leave the galaxy.“When a star encounters a black hole binary, the complex dynamics of this three-body interaction can toss that star right out of the globular cluster,” says Kyle Kremer, incoming assistant professor in UC San Diego’s Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.The object also appears to have a very interesting chemical composition with very few heavy elements like compared to other stars and brown dwarfs. This means that this stellar object is extremely old, among the oldest in the Milky Way.The study is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

A personalized approach to a common Parkinson’s disease treatment may lead to substantially improved results, according to a new study. Deep brain stimulation (DBS), which involves implanting electrodes into the brain to stimulate regions affected by the disease, is usually a standardized treatment – but the study team found that an approach adapted to each patient might be a better way forward.DBS can offer Parkinson’s disease patients a lifeline when drug treatments are no longer working so well. It’s particularly helpful for dealing with the motor symptoms of the disease, such as tremors and rigidity. Electrodes are implanted into specific brain regions, connected via wires that run down through the neck to a neurostimulator that is inserted just under the skin, usually near the collarbone. The stimulator is similar to a heart pacemaker; it provides the power to send bursts of electricity to stimulate the brain tissue in a targeted way.While the positioning of the electrodes can be adapted slightly to suit each person, the stimulation itself is usually continuous while the device is switched on, meaning it’s not always super-precise and can sometimes over- or undercompensate, leading to side effects.Led by a team at the University of California San Francisco, a new study aimed to trial a more personalized approach to DBS, called adaptive DBS (aDBS), in four patients with Parkinson’s. The trial builds on foundational work conducted by senior authors Dr Simon Little and Dr Philip Starr, demonstrating that patients with Parkinson’s show unique brain wave fluctuations associated with both motor and non-motor symptoms.  “The big shift we’ve made with adaptive DBS is that we’re able to detect, in real time, where a patient is on the symptom spectrum and match it with the exact amount of stimulation they need,” said Little in a statement seen by IFLScience. The months-long project involved collecting recordings of brain activity from the patients for several days – both in the clinic and going about their normal activities at home – and comparing that against smartwatch data and the patients’ own reports of their symptoms. Taking this data, they recognized that brain activity in the motor cortex was a reliable marker of the patients’ symptom fluctuations. Personalizing each patient’s stimulation to their own neural signals led to a 50 percent reduction in the duration of their motor symptoms relative to the traditional, continuous stimulation. Three of the four patients also reported that the new protocol improved their quality of life. This is only a small pilot study, and further research will be needed to refine the approach. But aDBS has been a research goal for a long time, and these findings provide more evidence to suggest that this has the potential to provide considerable benefits for at least some of the over 8.5 million people thought to be affected by Parkinson’s worldwide.“There’s been a great deal of interest in improving DBS therapy by making it adaptive and self-regulating, but it’s only been recently that the right tools and methods have been available to allow people to use this long-term in their homes,” said Starr. The researchers also note that most patients would still need to take medication to replace the dopamine that the brain is no longer able to produce to the same levels as before, even with aDBS, but this is also the case with conventional DBS. The stimulation can work in tandem with the drugs, ramping up as the drug starts to wear off before the next dose.DBS itself marked a huge shift in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. The team hopes that aDBS could one day be similarly seismic – and not only for Parkinson’s patients.“We see that it has a profound impact on patients, with potential not just in Parkinson’s but probably for psychiatric conditions like depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder as well,” said Starr. “We’re at the beginning of a new era of neurostimulation therapies.”The study is published in the journal Nature Medicine. 

A powerful geomagnetic storm that engulfed our planet three months ago altered the atmosphere in ways that have never been seen before. Among the unique phenomena triggered by the event was the appearance of a huge spiral structure in the thermosphere, as well as the complete obliteration of the ionosphere in the mid-latitude region.Triggered by a series of seven coronal mass ejections (CMEs) hurled towards us from the sun, the G5 geomagnetic storm of May 10 and 11 was the strongest that has been detected for 20 years and sparked some incredible auroras at latitudes that wouldn’t normally get to enjoy them. Tracking the impact of this bombardment using NASA's Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) instrument, a pair of new studies show how the event distorted the various layers of Earth’s atmosphere.One of these looked at how temperature and pressure changes altered the arrangement of the thermosphere. Summarizing the study’s findings in a statement, author Scott England explained that the intense rain of charged particles experienced during a geomagnetic storm “makes the atmosphere near the poles very hot, which starts to push air away from the poles and towards the equator.”Recording a temperature difference of 400 Kelvin, (127°C; 260°F) between the poles and the equator during the storm, the team noted that these changes produced a “previously unseen structure in the upper atmosphere.” “The morphology seen at mid latitudes and the equatorial region is stunning,” they write, adding that the “large scale structure… [had the] appearance of a swirl or eddy in the structure, suggesting possible rotation” like an enormous hurricane. Describing the gigantic vortex in somewhat quainter terms, England says the storm produced "delightful swirly patterns" in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.The other study used GOLD to track changes in the ionosphere during the spectacular event. Results showed that a peaked structure known as the Equatorial Ionization Anomaly (EIA) – which normally sits within 10 to 20 degrees of latitude from the equator – moved southwards in the wake of the storm, merging with the aurora itself near the tip of South America.As the aurora moved northwards towards the equator, the union of these two elements resulted in the complete disappearance of the mid-latitude ionosphere. “This is the first reported observation of the nighttime EIA crest merging with the aurora,” write the study authors.                    At present, scientists are unsure what to make of these previously unseen phenomena, although with the solar maximum expected in 2025, we’re likely to see plenty more extreme solar activity in the near future, which should give us ample opportunity to study the effects of geomagnetic storms. "This data poses a lot of questions,” says England. “Like, did something really different happen during this geomagnetic storm than has happened previously, or do we just have better instruments to measure the changes?"The two studies are published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, here and here. 

A new study has found that the brain stores memories using three different sets of neurons, which could give scientists insights into restoring lost memories and alleviating painful experiences. The study demonstrates that, like a computer system with a backup, our brain creates redundant copies of memories in different types of neurons. This discovery could potentially help survivors of traumatic events ease painful memories or even recover lost ones, reports newatlas.com. Scientists, observing the brains of mice, found that a single memory is stored in three groups of neurons simultaneously. These groups develop at different stages of life—early neurons, late neurons, and an intermediate group that forms between them. The researchers discovered that memories stored in early neurons become stronger over time, while those stored in late neurons are initially strong but gradually become less accessible to the brain. The most stable memories are stored in the intermediate neurons, demonstrating the greatest longevity. The results of this study support the concept of brain plasticity—its ability to adapt and modify memories. This discovery could be a step toward new treatments for people with post-traumatic stress disorder, allowing recent painful memories to be altered before they become entrenched. Understanding these processes may also help recover memories that were previously thought to be permanently forgotten. The study authors are confident that this discovery will lay the groundwork for future research in neurobiology, opening up new possibilities for working with memory and treating psychological trauma. The post The Brain Creates Three Copies for a Single Memory appeared first on Anomalien.com.

New York Times reporter Jazmine Ulloa, who has deputized herself as the Republican language police on the immigration issue, transformed wholly reasonable conservative concerns raised about voting integrity among Ohioans into “one of the most pernicious far-right conspiracy theories” in Sunday’s “In JD Vance’s Backyard, Conspiracy Theories About Migrants and Voting Abound.” The nasty story also served as a guilt-by-association partisan attack on Sen. Vance of Ohio, who has proved himself so far to be an effective vice presidential political attack dog for the Republican ticket. Paul C. Pauley views himself as a middle-of-the-road Republican -- who also just happens to believe in one of the most pernicious far-right conspiracy theories about illegal border crossings: that Democrats are bringing undocumented immigrants into the country to vote for their party. “I don’t think they’re going to get that vote this year,” said Mr. Pauley, who sells evergreens on a family farm near Warren, Ohio. “But four years from now? Eight years from now?” The idea of a mass of illegals crossing the border now, then voting for Harris in November, may indeed sound a little far-fetched -- but it’s common sense to think an illegal immigrant could become a naturalized citizen and be eligible to vote in a presidential election, yes, "four or eight" years from now, and to vote for the party who bestowed that citizenship. Ulloa fiercely defended the political innocence of the Democrats, as if it such a bluntly partisan motivation was the furthest thing from their minds. ….It also strains even the imagination, envisioning Democrats in Washington circumventing border rules, officials and infrastructure to allow undocumented immigrants into the country, help them settle and then cast ballots, legally or not. Politico certainly took the idea seriously in a 2013 article, “Immigration reform could be bonanza for Democrats,” which opened: The immigration proposal pending [in 2013] in Congress would transform the nation’s political landscape for a generation or more -- pumping as many as 11 million new Hispanic voters into the electorate a decade from now in ways that, if current trends hold, would produce an electoral bonanza for Democrats and cripple Republican prospects in many states they now win easily. Is Politico part of the vast right-wing conspiracy? She was obliged to note: More than a dozen cities and towns, mostly in deep-blue areas, allow foreign nationals to vote in local elections regardless of their immigration status, which state and local leaders say is warranted because unauthorized immigrants pay taxes at levels comparable to those of citizens and strengthen their economies…. That hasn’t stopped Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance from emphasizing the claim in media appearances and campaign events, fueling a conspiracy theory that is central to Mr. Trump’s lie that the last election was stolen from him. They use it to pummel the Biden administration’s border policies and cast Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, as a failed “border czar,” misconstruing the role she played. Harris was in fact the “border czar” under Biden according to mainstream media reports, until the moment it became politically inconvenient. Besides disgracefully tying Vance's stump rhetoric to racist shootings, Ulloa used the up-to-the-minute Times-approved euphemism for illegals: Mr. Vance has made the conspiracy claim a staple of his stump speech, and in interviews has gone so far as to suggest that Democrats believe they can altogether “replace” native-born Americans, language that has been used by perpetrators of several mass shootings. At recent rallies in Arizona and Nevada, he said Ms. Harris would give every undocumented immigrant the right to vote and “destroy” Americans’ say in their own country…. …. A road trip through Mr. Vance’s backyard in a stretch of northern Ohio offers a glimpse into how their claims about immigrant voting, long amplified by the right-wing media and Trump allies, have taken hold with a swath of voters. Even as Republicans have sought to downplay some of the most extreme voices propagating 2020 election denialism, distrust in the election system has festered. She acknowledged the fact that illegal migrant crossings had “skyrocketed” during the Biden years, but blew right by it to again attack the Republican “conspiracy theory.”

A mob of about 20 individuals pulled off three smash-and-grab robberies in 20 minutes Friday night at Hollywood 7-Elevens — the same day Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed bills into law that are said to combat such crimes, KNBC-TV reported.The crooks fled on bicycles from the stores, which are within a two-mile radius of each other, the station said.The station also rolled surveillance video of a similar smash-and-grab by a mob of teenagers at another area 7-Eleven the previous week.The first store on 7040 West Sunset Blvd. was robbed just after 8 p.m., KNBC said, adding that the business was left with a broken window.The second store near Hollywood and Highland was robbed at 8:16 p.m., the station said, adding that the crooks assaulted an employee.The third store at 5700 Santa Monica Boulevard was robbed at 8:22 p.m., KNBC said.More from the station:The string of robberies took place on the same day Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bipartisan package of 10 bills that aims to crack down on smash-and-grab robberies and property crimes, making it easier to go after repeat shoplifters and auto thieves and increase penalties for those running professional reselling schemes.The station also rolled surveillance video of a similar smash-and-grab by a mob of teenagers at another area 7-Eleven the previous week.It's worth noting that a mob of about 30 teenagers on bicycles were caught on video brutally beating up and robbing a lone man in downtown Los Angeles earlier this month. The victim suffered a broken leg — which will require surgery — as well as deep cuts all over his body after getting kicked and punched while on the ground.How are observers reacting?Over 150 comments were logged under the KNBC YouTube video report — and as you might expect, they weren't happy:"Parent is like, 'Bring me home some chips & cigarettes sweetie. Have fun,'" one commenter noted sarcastically."How sad is an entire state [that has] been taken over by teenagers?!?!" another commenter opined."Stop calling them people. People don't act this way," another commenter stated. "Clearly this is some other species.""Only bookstores are safe in California," another commenter quipped.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

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