MILWAUKEE—Vivek Ramaswamy believes the United States may have fallen into a “civil war” if former President Donald Trump had been more seriously injured or died. Speaking to the press after his speech at The Heritage Foundation’s Policy Fest at the Republican National Convention, the former Republican presidential candidate discussed the Saturday shooting at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “The nation came within a hair’s breadth of, God forbid, a second kind of civil war in this country. And we missed it. … I think that God gave us that opportunity and now it’s up to us to step up and seize it,” the entrepreneur told reporters. Ramaswamy also said he believed that there was a divine intervention. “I personally believe that God did intervene. … That’s my own faith, that God puts each of us here for a purpose and he has a higher plan,” he said. “But even if you just look at it, even if you’re not a person of faith, something extraordinary happened for somebody to have aimed in a way that got that close and still missed.” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday that “it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.” “We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness,” he added. The post Ramaswamy Says US Could Have Had ‘Civil War’ If Trump Killed, Seriously Injured appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Elon Musk has suggested that the European Union attempted to coerce him with an underhanded deal to secretly implement censorship within his platform. Musk further added that EU-designed negotiations were accepted by other online platforms. However, he outrightly rejected the concealed deal. On Friday, the EU made strides in evidencing the potency of its fresh Digital Services Act (DSA) by launching an attack on X, which is owned by Musk. The group accused X of being in violation of specific EU regulations and threatened the platform with punitive fines. In response to this, Musk was quick to counter-attack by criticizing the DSA as a “canned misinformation” source. He further revealed that the EU had solicited a clandestine deal with him for entering into censorship pertaining to the EU’s directives. In his revelation, Musk stated, “The European Commission offered [X] an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us.” He assured his stance by saying, “The other platforms accepted that deal,” however, he did not agree to participate. He also expressed his anticipations for the future, saying, “We look forward to a very public battle in court, so that the people of Europe can know the truth.” The European Union criticized X for its lack of transparency and pointed out that social media platforms are obligated to counteract “illegal content” as well as “risks to public security” as per its regulations. Furthermore, the EU claimed that it was discontent with the X’s blue check system, deeming it incompatible with the “industry practice.” In case of non-compliance with EU’s stipulations, X could face repercussions, including a potential fine equivalent to six percent of its total global revenue. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Elon Musk Exposes EU’s Censorship Demands appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Carrie Wolinetz, past Chief of Staff of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), asserted in no uncertain terms last Thursday that there was no suppression of the lab leak theory throughout the Covid-19 drama. This denial, made during the Senate Homeland Security hearing, came in response to queries from Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, regarding her potential role in suppressing the theory – suggesting that the virus was inadvertently released from a lab in China – across internet platforms. Hawley sought to ascertain if Wolinetz had any regrets about not resisting supposed censorship attempts orchestrated by her then-superior, NIH’s previous Director Francis Collins, or Dr. Anthony Fauci. Hawley asked Wolinetz directly, putting forth, “Do you regret your role in helping censor millions of Americans who were kicked off social media, who were disciplined at work for saying ‘maybe a lab was involved?’” Her response was firm, maintaining that she never played the role he suggested. When posed with the question of whether she regretted not standing against such censorship, Wolinetz adamantly reiterated, “I don’t believe censorship took place, sir.” https://video.reclaimthenet.org/articles/HawleyMO-rtn-534.mp4 In light of her insistence that no such suppression efforts had been carried out, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky responded by revealing Wolinetz would not be considered for a role in a proposed board – introduced by himself and aimed at overseeing federal funding for high-priority life sciences research and assuring agency accountability – under the Executive Branch. Despite Wolinetz’s denial, evidence and instances that hint at a strict censorship regime have surfaced. One significant account of such censorship involves Facebook labeling and suppressing stories relating to the controversial lab leak theory a “false.” The Biden Administration even called for curbing “misinformation,” an action that included requests to Facebook to limit private conversations on WhatsApp, as revealed by emails from 2023 under the lawsuit: Missouri v. Biden, (later Murthy v. Missouri) revolving around freedom of speech. The release of the Twitter Files further unveiled Twitter’s broadened practice of handling content moderation requests from various federal and state agencies, the State Department, and the intelligence community during the pandemic. This collaboration between the government and social media magnates reportedly involved restricting the Hunter Biden laptop story, blacklisting prominent conservative figures, and subtly restricting conservative content. Records obtained by the House Republicans expose another probable suppression effort wherein Fauci’s advisor David Morens toned down the lab leak hypothesis at Fauci’s directive as per the instructions documented in the files. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Former NIH Chief of Staff Denies Suppressing Lab Leak Theory Amid Pandemic Censorship Allegations appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Samuel Plimsoll (1824-1898) was an MP and social reformer, later known for his role as a maritime safety campaigner. Although born 200 years ago, his work to improve safety at sea remains relevant. His namesake ‘Plimsoll Line’ is found midship on both the port and starboard hulls of cargo vessels and is still used worldwide by the shipping industry to help save lives at sea. Here we explore the safety issues in 19th century shipping that Plimsoll wanted to address, his campaigning on maritime safety alongside Lloyd’s Register, and its ongoing impact.  A plimsoll line – load line mark and lines on the hull of a shipImage Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Flickr by Brinki / cc-by-sa-2.0 ‘Coffin ships’ Enormous growth in world trade meant 19th century merchant shipping became increasingly competitive. Despite the ‘Lloyd’s Rule’ that had come into effect in 1835 stipulating that classed vessels should have a distance from the waterline to the weather deck of 3 inches of freeboard for every foot of depth in the hold, many transatlantic ships were still overloaded by their unscrupulous owners in order to maximise profits, as the rule was only optional. Often overinsured, many of these overloaded wooden sailing ships were also often unseaworthy, worth more to their owners sunk than afloat. Usually old and riddled with wood-rot, woodworm and shipworm, many were repainted, renamed and falsely stated to be new ships.  The subsequent risks to crew members lives led to such ships being nicknamed ‘coffin ships’. Indeed at the time there had been over 2,000 cases of sailors who had signed on as crew being tried in court for refusing to board a ship upon seeing its condition, and in 1855 a group of sailors had even written to Queen Victoria complaining of being found guilty of desertion for complaining about going to sea in dangerous ships. Samuel Plimsoll’s campaign After leaving school early, Samuel Plimsoll became a clerk and later manager at Rawson’s Brewery. Yet having failed in his attempt to become a London coal merchant, Plimsoll was reduced to destitution in 1853 – an experience that helped him sympathise with the struggles of the poor. When his life picked up, he resolved to devote his time to improving their condition. After becoming a Liberal MP for Derby in 1867, Plimsoll investigated ship safety and was shocked upon discovering the scale of life lost at sea.  Aware of growing widespread concerns about the unsafe loading of ships and the many thousands of lives and ships being lost, together with his wife Eliza Plimsoll (an equal partner in the cause), Samuel led a decades-long legal, social, and political battle for justice against ‘coffin ships’. He campaigned to pass a bill for the introduction of a mandatory safe load line on ships. Left: Samuel Plimsoll. Right: Portrait of Samuel Plimsoll (1824-1898), painted by Reginald Henry CampbellImage Credit: Left: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain. Right: Wikimedia Commons / Reginald Henry Campbell / Royal Museums Greenwich / Public Domain Plimsoll was unsuccessful due to opposition from merchants and the number of powerful ship-owning MPs in Parliament. Undeterred, he published a book in 1872 called Our Seamen which detailed evidence of reckless overloading, the poor condition of boat hulls and equipment, undermanning, filthy crew accommodation, the prevalence of over-insurance and the deliberate sinking of unsound and unprofitable ‘coffin ships’.  Plimsoll’s book became nationally well-known, prompting a campaign that led to the appointment of a Royal Commission on Unseaworthy Ships in 1873, to assess evidence and recommend changes. While associated with Plimsoll, load lines had been used dating back to the 12th century in Venice, but it wasn’t until the 19th century that their use became more widespread. In 1874 Lloyd’s Register made it a condition of their classification that a load line was painted on newly built awning deck steamers. This original load line was a diamond with a centre line and the letters L R next to it, and aimed to show how low a ship could safely rest in water without the risk of sinking. However, this only applied to ships inspected by Lloyd’s Register, and other ships could do as they pleased.  In 1875 a government bill was introduced to address the problem, and although Plimsoll regarded it inadequate, resolved to accept it. However, after Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli later announced the bill would be dropped, Plimsoll called members of the House “villains” and shook his fist in the Speaker’s face. Disraeli called for him to be reprimanded, but after the matter was adjourned for a week, Plimsoll apologised. Nevertheless, many people shared Plimsoll’s view that the bill had been stifled by the pressure of the shipowners. Ultimately, the power of public feeling forced the government to pass the Unseaworthy Ships Bill, eventually resulting in the The Merchant Shipping Act 1876. The ‘Plimsoll line’ The Merchant Shipping Act 1876 required all foreign-going British vessels, coasting vessels over 80 tons and foreign ships using British ports to have compulsory deck lines and load lines marked on their hull to indicate the maximum depth to which the ship may be safely immersed when loaded with cargo. (This depth varies depending on the ship’s dimensions, cargo type, time of year, and water saltiness and densities it would encounter while at port and at sea. Once these factors have been accounted for, a ship’s captain can determine the appropriate ‘Plimsoll line’ needed for the voyage.) Stringent powers of inspection were given to the Board of Trade to enforce this rule, however fierce opposition meant the act was misused by many as it was left to ship owners to decide where a load line was to be painted and to paint the lines themselves (with some even painting these on the ship’s funnel). To overcome this, data on vessels’ strength and construction was gathered by Lloyd’s Register surveyors, and used to draw up the UK’s Board of Trade Load Line Tables in 1886 to ensure the fixing of the position of the Load Line on all ships by law in 1890 – this line became known as the ‘Plimsoll Line’ in Britain.  Despite being re-elected at 1880 general election by a great majority, Samuel Plimsoll gave up his seat to William Vernon Harcourt, believing that Harcourt, as Home Secretary, could advance sailors’ interests more effectively. Having then been offered a seat by 30 constituencies, Plimsoll unsuccessfully stood in Sheffield Central in 1885, but later became estranged from the Liberal leaders, regarding them as having neglected the question of shipping reform. Nevertheless, thanks to Plimsoll’s campaigning, countless lives and ships have since been saved. International solutions By the early 1900s, many countries had adopted their own loading regulations, yet in 1906, foreign ships were required to carry a load line if they visited British ports. In 1930, the first International Convention on Load Lines established an international solution. Later, in 1966, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), a UN agency responsible for ship safety, adopted a new Convention ensuring ships had enough reserve buoyancy and covering, allowing freeboard for a ship in different climate zones and seasons via a load line zone map:  Load line and Freeboard conference from the Lloyd’s Register publication, 100A1, 100A1, 1959Image Credit: Lloyd’s Register Foundation The original ‘Plimsoll line’ was a circle with a horizontal line through it to show the maximum draft of a ship. Additional marks have been added over the years, allowing for different water densities and expected sea conditions. Letters may also appear to the sides of the mark indicating the classification society that surveyed the vessel’s load line. Load Line Mark and Lines and Timber Load Line Mark and Lines for power driven merchant vessels. (TF – Tropical Fresh Water, F – Fresh Water, T – Tropical Seawater, S – Summer Temperate Seawater (NB – The ‘Plimsoll Line’ and the ‘Summer Line’ are the same thing – all the other lines take their positions from there), W – Winter Temperate Seawater, WNA – Winter North Atlantic Prefix, L – Lumber, L ⦵ R – Lloyd’s Register)Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Now, when a ship is commissioned, the exact location of the load line is calculated by a classification society, its position on the hull is verified and a load line certificate is issued. Calculations take into account the route the ship will take, and the seasons and sea temperature conditions of the geographic locations the ship will pass through en-route to its destination to ensure its adequate stability. The basic symbol, of a circle with a horizontal line passing through its centre, is now recognised worldwide.

Secret Service: No, We're Not Increasing Trump's Security

How do anesthetics stop us from perceiving the world around us? Some may knock us out by making the brain temporarily more unstable, a new study focusing on the drug propofol suggests.Anesthesia: the word itself comes from the ancient Greek "an" (without) and "aesthesis" (sensation). Anesthesia is medically described as a combination of paralysis (the lack of movement), analgesia (the lack of pain), amnesia (the lack of memory), and unconsciousness. It is a chemically induced brain state that has been a powerful tool in medicine, making many surgical procedures possible. In everyday life, our brains go through a number of brain states, for example, being awake or asleep. One way these states are different is how they process sensory stimuli, perturbations to the state of our brain. For example, the sound of a notification on your phone causes a cascade of neural activity: cells become more active, and signal to other cells. That same sound will have completely different effects on the brain’s activity and your sensory perception depending on your state. You might not hear it at all if you’re asleep. Or under anesthesia.How does our brain respond to sensory stimuli under anesthesia and why can we not consciously perceive them? A study published today tried to understand the differences between an awake brain and one under anesthesia by looking at the stability of the brain’s activity. They used principles of a branch of mathematics called dynamical systems theory that allowed them to measure stability. Stability is a system’s ability to recover from disturbances and return to a baseline state. A stable system is a pendulum with friction: you can change the position from which you drop it, but eventually, it will come to rest in the same position. An example of an unstable system is the weather: a small perturbation can lead to big changes in the system over time, This effect is often metaphorically described as a tornado caused by the flap of the wings of a butterfly“The brain has to operate on this knife’s edge between excitability and chaos. It’s got to be excitable enough for its neurons to influence one another, but if it gets too excitable, it spins off into chaos.” said Professor Earl Miller, one of the senior authors on the study, in a press release, explaining how stability can be a useful metric to quantify the state of the brain.In the study, researchers recorded from the brains of two macaques while they were administered propofol, an injectable anesthetic commonly used in surgery. As the primates went deeper into anesthesia the activity in their brains became increasingly unstable.The stability of the awake brain is in part due to a balance between excitation and inhibition. Broadly speaking, there are two classes of neurons in your brain: ones that increase the activity in other neurons (excitatory) and ones that decrease it (inhibitory). Propofol acts on the inhibitory system, enhancing it and bringing the system out of balance.The researchers then played sounds to the macaques and found that, under anesthesia, the responses in the brain were slower and longer. The sensory stimulation led to a prolonged perturbation in the state of the system. This somewhat erratic activity could mean that the brain can no longer process information effectively. This could be why we can’t perceive our environment under anesthesia – and can’t feel pain. This new method for describing brain states by looking at their stability could be used to study “different brain states, different types of anesthetics, and also other neuropsychiatric conditions like depression and schizophrenia”, said Professor Ila Fiete, another senior author on the study.This article is published in the journal Neuron.

With 200 billion trillion (ish) stars in the universe and 13.7 billion years that have elapsed since it all began, you might be wondering where all the alien civilizations are. This is the basic question behind the Fermi paradox, the tension between our suspicions of the potential for life in the universe (given planets found in habitable zones, etc) and the fact that we have only found one planet with an intelligent (ish) species inhabiting it. There are plenty of proposed explanations for the paradox, from a galactic zoo and everybody keeping quiet so they don't get destroyed, to great filters stopping the progress of life at various stages. A new paper has taken a look at the paradox from a fresh angle, and concluded the simplest explanation might be the best; it's possible we are entirely (or almost entirely) the only intelligent civilization in our galaxy.The paper begins with a thought experiment, proposed by physicist Edwin Jaynes in 1968. Imagine you enter a laboratory and find a line of large beakers filled with water, in which you will place "substance X" to see if it dissolves.In such a scenario, you would expect that the substance would either dissolve nearly 100 percent of the time, or nearly zero percent of the time. Either this substance dissolves in water at room temperature or it doesn't. If it were to dissolve about half the time, that would imply that the tiny variations in temperature and pressure in the lab were enough to change the outcome, and that the conditions had been "finely tuned" for the substance to dissolve. We can apply the same sort of reasoning to the hunt for alien life and civilizations. "Consider an ensemble of Earth-like planets across the cosmos - worlds with similar gravity, composition, chemical inventories and climatic conditions," the team writes in their paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. "Although small differences will surely exist across space (like the beakers across the laboratory), one should reasonably expect that life either emerges nearly all of the time in such conditions, or hardly ever. As before, it would seem contrived for life to emerge in approximately half of the cases - again motivated from the fine-tuning perspective."We do not have enough information to use this reasoning on lower levels of life, such as microbial life. It could be that microbial life emerges in nearly every case it can arise, or nearly never emerges. We simply do not have enough data on planets and exoplanets to know either way, although looking at our own planet we know that multicellular life has only existed for around 600 million years, which may suggest the jump from single cells to multicellular life is rare.       First author on the paper David Kipping explains more.We also can't use our own existence as proof that we are living in the scenario where intelligent species are abundant. We could just be in one of the very rare worlds where life arose.But we do have a little information that we could use to constrain the search for advanced alien civilizations. Though we have looked for potential Dyson Spheres and other signs of advanced alien civilizations, they have all (where explanations have been found) turned out to be natural phenomena, e.g. hot dogs. If we were in a galaxy where intelligent life almost always emerges (across large timescales, and making reasonable assumptions about longevity), then you would expect to see the signs of alien civilizations throughout it, as the team highlighted using a modified Drake Equation. We simply do not see this, leading us to the conclusion that we are in the scenario where we are in a galaxy in which intelligent life nearly never emerges, rather than the one where it is abundant.That's a pretty bleak conclusion, but the team says there are still possible reasons to be optimistic about the scenario where intelligent life emerges rarely, but spreads quickly when it does so, the so-called "grabby aliens" scenario."Here, one might imagine that ETIs emerge rarely, but when they do they often proceed to colonize their region in short order. In such a Universe, most regions are filled and thus F ≈ 1. The fact we don’t see F ≈ 1 locally is because humanity must necessarily have emerged in a pocket of space where this wave has not yet reached, via the weak anthropic principle," the team explains. "Such a scenario lends itself to inverting the normal view of SETI - rather than looking locally, we should be looking at regions greatly separated from us. Such a hypothesis has ther advantage that it is, in principle, verifiable via extragalactic SETI."The paper is posted to pre-print server arXiv.

In a quiet pocket of Mexico, archaeologists have used LiDAR imaging to reveal long-lost structures built by the Maya culture centuries ago. Among the discoveries are grand pyramids and a civic-ceremonial center, plus a subterranean structure found beneath a Maya ball court.The recent archaeological work was carried out by Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in central Campeche, a state that's famed for its ancient Maya ruins. The new project focused on a lesser-studied forest called the Balam Kú Biosphere Reserve, which spans approximately 140 square kilometers (54 square miles).The area is marked by tough terrain that’s tricky to farm, so unsurprisingly it’s home to fewer ancient settlements and structures compared to neighboring regions. The sites are also more modest in style, featuring minimal architectural decoration and engravings."The inevitable impression is that the Maya culture of this region that we have just explored was noticeably less elaborate than that of Petén, to the south, and the regions of Chenes and Chactún, to the north and east," Ivan Šprajc, an archaeologist from the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, said in a statement. Nevertheless, the researchers were able to make several significant discoveries thanks to LiDAR, a remote sensing technology that uses lasers to reveal hidden structures by penetrating dense vegetation and capturing precise topographical data.LiDAR images show an unusual substructure located under the site of a Maya ball court.Image credit: INAHOne important find was a group of structures near Nadzcaan, a site first discovered in the 1990s, featuring a main plaza with a pyramid construction and a drainage channel. Another notable site featured a large building that stood 13 meters (43 feet) tall and likely served as a civic-ceremonial center. This settlement, they suspect, must have held some “socio-political importance” given the building's stature. In the eastern part of this site, they also found a ball court that appears to sit on top of a substructure possibly from the Early Classic period (200-600 CE).Lastly, a third site consisted of several structures concentrated on a natural hill. Next to the main plaza stood a 16-meter (52-foot) high pyramid surrounded by several “offerings”, including a flint point, ceramic remains, and an animal leg fragment, perhaps of an armadillo or large rodent. This settlement dates to the Late Postclassic period (1250-1524 CE) during the last few centuries before the Americas were turned upside-down by the arrival of the Spanish. It also shows how human cultures managed to persist long after the disintegration of complex political entities in the Central Lowlands at the end of the Classic period.In recent years, LiDAR technology has revolutionized the field of archaeology. It’s proved to be especially useful in the tropical Americas where the relentless rainforests have swamped the ruins of many pre-Columbian civilizations, including highly complex settlements of enormous size and significance.One recent study indicated there could be as many as 10,000 archaeological sites hidden throughout the Amazon basin alone, shutting down the idea that the region was sparsely populated before it was colonized by Europeans. 

New research shows that the Cambrian explosion, one of the most important interludes in the story of life on Earth, may have been triggered by a small increase in oxygen levels. Using datasets from an international consortium of scientists, the team show that modest changes in oxygen levels may have been enough to cause the major evolutionary leap we see in the fossil record.What was the Cambrian explosion?The Cambrian explosion occurred around 540 million years ago and brought with it a rapid burst of evolution, which resulted in greater diversification of life on the planet. Before this, life mostly consisted of single-celled and smaller multicellular organisms. But the fossil record shows that, within 20 to 30 million years – basically a single heartbeat in geological time – we see a huge variety of complex creatures emerging. Each new species has its own strange and novel body plan, with features like mineralized shells, gripping appendages, and sensory organs like eyes.“The specific animals that we observe as fossils from rocks of this age may look weird and wonderful to us,” Dr Richard Stockey, lead author of the new study and a paleobiologist at the University of Southampton explained to IFLScience, “but the ecological roles they were playing were very similar to marine animals that we know and love today.”“Unravelling whether there was an environmental trigger to this (geologically) rapid shift in the habitability of Earth’s oceans is a question that is fundamental to our understanding of our biosphere, and even potentially for the habitability of other planets.”Scientific uncertaintyFor decades, scientists believed the Cambrian explosion was kicked off by a sudden surge in atmospheric oxygen that brought oceanic oxygen levels close to what they are today.However, evidence for this has been limited, scattered, and, in some cases, contradictory.“As a community, we have been balancing a number of different lines of evidence, based on the chemical composition of ancient sediments,” Stockey added.“Some of these seemed to indicate a big oxygenation event around the Cambrian explosion, while others seemed to indicate that this scale of oxygenation didn’t occur until around 140 million years later.”But by conducting a comprehensive, large-scale data analysis, Stockey and colleagues have found that only a small increase in atmospheric oxygen actually occurred at the time of the Cambrian explosion.We have demonstrated that these changes in ocean oxygenation likely took place at a time where they could have played a key role in the major ecological and evolutionary changes we see during the so-called Cambrian explosion.Dr Richard StockeyThey did this by analyzing data showing levels of the metals uranium and molybdenum contained in sedimentary rock that formed in low-oxygen environments at the bottom of the world’s ancient oceans. The concentration of these metals in black shale is useful for assessing oceanic oxygen levels, essentially offering a way to investigate them across 700 million years of history.In the past, studies have found traces of metals in black shale during the Cambrian explosion, but they were based on data collected from sites where local factors can lead to increased levels of metal concentration. But statistical and machine learning techniques allowed Stockey and his team to assess data across a much larger scale and to match it with oceanographic models that give a better picture of historical oxygen levels.They found that changes in organic carbon in black shale have led to changes in trace metals that researchers have been seeing for the last 15 to 20 years."It's not until 140 million years after the Cambrian explosion, in the Devonian period, that we see trace metals increasing at a rate that would indicate whole ocean oxygenation," Stockey explained in a statement.Setting the oxygen record straightThe black shale data were compiled as part of the Sedimentary Geochemistry and Paleoenvironments Project. This is a first-in-its-field research consortium that unites geochemical data in a standardized dataset for collaborative and large-scale analysis.“Our community-driven approach has been absolutely critical to making this research possible,” Stockey told IFLScience.“We have found that the environmental conditions in which marine sediments were deposited are often very important in structuring the chemical composition of those sedimentary rocks, impacting the records that geochemists use to reconstruct the oxygenation of the oceans.”Geologists are specialists at figuring out key environmental changes, but they have limitations.“[G]eology has historically been quite a descriptive science and descriptive data is often difficult to integrate into state-of-the-art data science and machine learning techniques. By working with the geologists who originally described and collected the specific samples we use in this study, we are able to all use a common language and vocabulary to describe differences between the rocks we use from different geographic locations and time periods.”With this common vocabulary, researchers can apply sophisticated data science techniques that use this “geological knowledge” to address significant questions like the one being investigated here.“We have demonstrated that these changes in ocean oxygenation likely took place at a time where they could have played a key role in the major ecological and evolutionary changes we see during the so-called Cambrian explosion. I am really excited to keep investigating the extent to which those changes really did drive these changes,” Stockey concluded.“I think that we have a lot to learn from researchers who work on the impacts of environmental changes in modern oceans, as well as continuing to develop techniques that translate geological and palaeontological knowledge into powerful datasets that can be rigorously tested with modern data science.”The study is published in Nature Geoscience.

Astronomers have spotted a neutron star whose jet is changing direction for the first time. Likened to a garden sprinkler, the jet is coming from the phenomenal object Circinus X-1, one of the brightest and best-studied objects in the X-ray sky. However, it turns out that there is a lot more to discover about this object.Circinus X-1 is a binary system. It comprises a neutron star, the extremely dense remains of a star going supernova, orbited by a companion star from which it steals material. Some of that material is pushed away from the system in the form of powerful jets. These jets are commonly seen around black holes but Circinus X-1 was the first neutron star seen to have jets, back in 2007. Curiously, now it's been observed that the jet is not going straight.Circinus X-1 is such a well-studied source in our field, but it still remains such a puzzle even after 50 years of people looking at it.Fraser CowieThe interaction between the rotating star and the disk of material creates a precession. Just like a spinning top slowing down, the direction in the rotation of the neutron star and its jet point is changing. This motion makes the jet look like a garden sprinkler or even a gymnast's ribbon."[The research] is really exciting because Circinus X-1 is such a well-studied source in our field, but it still remains such a puzzle even after 50 years of people looking at it," Fraser Cowie, from the University of Oxford who presented the new research, told IFLScience. "Now we have managed, with our new observations, to shed a bit more light on why it is so puzzling and see even more features. We are starting to link the various puzzling things together in a more unified picture."Radio image of the S-shaped precessing jet launched by the neutron star in Circinus X-1.Image Credit: Fraser CowieThe observations were taken by the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa. Recent upgrades, which improve the sensitivity and resolution of radio observations, allowed the researchers to see the details of Circinus X-1’s jet, which is how the S-shaped structure was discovered. The accretion of material onto the neutron star is an extremely energetic process. Neutron stars are so dense that a teaspoon of material weighs as much as Mount Everest. As material falls onto these extremely dense objects, it can release the energy of a million Suns in a single second. Some of that energy will push away part of the infalling material into the jet.The jet is moving at velocities comparable to the speed of light. It slammed into the material surrounding this binary system creating termination shocks. It's moving so fast that interacting with the interstellar medium creates shockwaves.These termination shocks are moving at 10 percent of the speed of light. So it must have been caused by the jets. Winds, even from neutron stars, are not that energetic. This is the first time that termination shocks have been observed around an X-ray binary." We are still taking observations with MeerKAT every week. We can do two things with that. We can stack all the images together and look for even fainter new structures. Or we can start to look at how the source is changing with time," Cowie told IFLScience about the current work. Circinus X-1 will be followed up in multiple wavelengths leading to a more comprehensive picture of the system. The research was presented at the National Astronomy Meeting on July 15, 2024.