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Astronomers just disclosed one of the most extraordinary planets ever found

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Astronomers have taken itemized perceptions of an amazingly outrageous exoplanet, identifying severe surface temperatures in the district of 3,200 degrees Celsius (5,792 degrees Fahrenheit).

Those temperatures – estimated by the European Space Agency’s Characterizing ExOPlanet Satellite (or CHEOPS) – are sufficient to dissolve all stones and metals, and even transform them into a vaporous structure.

While the exoplanet, named WASP-189b, isn’t exactly as blistering as the outside of our Sun (6,000 degrees Celsius or 10,832 degrees Fahrenheit), it’s fundamentally as hot as some little small stars.

The new discoveries promptly recognize WASP-189b as one of the most extraordinary planets ever found. It has a circle of simply 2.7 days around its star, with one side seeing a perpetual ‘day’ and the opposite side seeing a lasting ‘night’. It’s monstrous, as well – about 1.6 occasions the size of Jupiter.

“WASP-189b is especially interesting because it is a gas giant that orbits very close to its host star,” says astrophysicist Monika Lendl from the University of Geneva in Switzerland. “It takes less than three days for it to circle its star, and it is 20 times closer to it than Earth is to the Sun.”

HD 133112 is the host star being referred to, 2,000 degrees Celsius (3,600 degrees Fahrenheit) more smoking than our Sun, and probably the most sizzling star known to have a planetary framework around it. CHEOPS made an intriguing revelation about this divine body as well: it’s turning so quick that it’s being pulled outwards at its equator.

WASP-189b is excessively far away (326 light-years) and excessively near HD 133112 to watch legitimately, however CHEOPS knows a few stunts. To begin with, it watched the exoplanet as it went behind its star: an occultation. At that point, it looked as WASP-189b went before its star: a travel.

From these readings, scientists had the option to make sense of the splendor, temperature, size, shape, and orbital attributes of the exoplanet, just as some additional data about the star that it’s hovering near.

As it’s on the size of Jupiter yet a lot nearer to its host star, and a lot more blazing, WASP-189b qualifies as a purported hot Jupiter planet (you can see where the name originated from). Researchers are trusting that the data CHEOPS has assembled about WASP-189b will improve our comprehension of hot Jupiters by and large.

“Only a handful of planets are known to exist around stars this hot, and this system is by far the brightest,” says Lendl. “WASP-189b is also the brightest hot Jupiter that we can observe as it passes in front of or behind its star, making the whole system really intriguing.”

One of the inquiries that the new CHEOPS research has raised is the way WASP-189b was shaped in any case – its slanted circle recommends it framed farther from HD 133112 and was then determined inwards.

Other than the secret stash of information this new examination has given, it likewise shows CHEOPS filling in as planned and functioning admirably, estimating splendor across profound space with a marvelous degree of exactness.

The satellite has bounty more missions to proceed onward to straightaway, with several exoplanets in the line for nearer perception. The information that it gathers should show us more our own Solar System, just as the planets outside of it.

“The accuracy achieved with CHEOPS is fantastic,” says planetary scientist Heike Rauer from the DLR Institute of Planetary Research in Germany. “The initial measurements already show that the instrument works better than expected. It is allowing us to learn more about these distant planets.”

Matthew Ronald grew up in Chicago. His mother is a preschool teacher, and his father is a cartoonist. After high school Matthew attended college where he majored in early-childhood education and child psychology. After college he worked with special needs children in schools. He then decided to go into publishing, before becoming a writer himself, something he always had an interest in. More than that, he published number of news articles as a freelance author on apstersmedia.com.

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Researchers find that laser light has the ability to cast shadows

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A blue laser was used to illuminate the ruby cube from the side while a high-power green laser was focused through it for the experiment. In order to produce a matched region in the illuminating light and a darker area that looks as a shadow of the green laser beam, the green laser increases the optical absorption of the blue illuminating laser beam.

Is it possible for light to cast a shadow? Researchers have discovered that, in some circumstances, a laser beam can behave like an opaque object and cast a shadow, which may sound like a philosophical conundrum. The finding casts doubt on the conventional wisdom regarding shadows and creates new opportunities for devices that could manipulate another laser beam with a laser beam.

“Laser light casting a shadow was previously thought impossible since light usually passes through other light without interacting,” said Raphael A. Abrahao, the leader of the study team from Brookhaven National Laboratory, formerly at the University of Ottawa. “Our demonstration of a very counter-intuitive optical effect invites us to reconsider our notion of shadow.”

In Optica, scientists explain how they demonstrated that a laser beam could block light and produce a visible shadow because of a nonlinear optical process using a ruby crystal and particular laser wavelengths. Light can affect another optical field when it interacts with a material in an intensity-dependent manner.

“Our understanding of shadows has developed hand-in-hand with our understanding of light and optics,” Abrahao stated. “This new finding could prove useful in various applications such as optical switching, devices in which light controls the presence of another light, or technologies that require precise control of light transmission, like high-power lasers.”

The new study is a part of a broader investigation of nonlinear optical processes and the interaction of two light beams under specific conditions.

Some experimental drawings created with 3D visualization software portray the shadow of a laser beam because they interpret it as a cylinder without taking into account the physics of a laser beam. This idea was first raised during a lunch chat. Could this be done in a lab? asked some of the scientists.

“What started as a funny discussion over lunch led to a conversation on the physics of lasers and the nonlinear optical response of materials,” Abrahao remarked. “From there, we decided to conduct an experiment to demonstrate the shadow of a laser beam.”

The researchers accomplished this by shining a blue laser sideways on a cube of regular ruby crystal and passing a high-power green laser through it. The material’s reaction to the blue wavelength is locally altered when the green laser enters the ruby. Whereas the blue laser behaves like illumination, the green laser behaves like a regular object.

On a screen, the interaction of the two light sources produced a shadow that could be seen as a dark spot where the blue light was blocked by the green laser. Because it was visible to the unaided eye, followed the outlines of the surface it fell on, and followed the location and form of the laser beam, which functioned as an object, it satisfied all the requirements for a shadow.

The ruby’s optical nonlinear absorption is what causes the laser shadow effect. The green laser produces a corresponding region in the illuminating light with reduced optical intensity by increasing the blue illuminating laser beam’s optical absorption. As a result, the green laser beam appears as a shadow in a darker area.

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Dinosaur-Era Bird Brains show the Origins of Avian Intelligence

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One of the most enduring mysteries of vertebrate evolution is how the distinct brains and intellect of contemporary birds developed, and a “one of a kind” fossil discovery could revolutionize our knowledge of this process.

An exceptionally well-preserved fossil bird from the Mesozoic Era, around the size of a starling, has been discovered by researchers. This is one of the most important discoveries of its kind since the entire skull has been preserved nearly intact, which is uncommon for any fossil bird but especially for one so old.

The researchers, lead by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the University of Cambridge, were able to digitally rebuild the bird’s brain, which they have called Navaornis hestiae, thanks to the remarkable three-dimensional preservation of the skull. Before the catastrophic extinction catastrophe that wiped off all non-avian dinosaurs, Navaornis thrived in what is now Brazil around 80 million years ago.

According to the researchers, their finding, which was published in the journal Nature, may serve as a kind of “Rosetta Stone” for figuring out the evolutionary history of the contemporary bird brain. The fossil closes a 70-million-year gap in our knowledge of the evolution of bird brains between the 150-million-year-old Archaeopteryx, the first known dinosaur that resembled a bird, and modern birds.

Given that its cerebrum was larger than Archaeopteryx’s, Navaornis may have possessed more sophisticated cognitive abilities than the first dinosaurs that resembled birds. But the majority of its brain regions, such as the cerebellum, were underdeveloped, indicating that it had not yet developed the sophisticated flight control systems found in contemporary birds.

According to co-lead author Dr. Guillermo Navalón of Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences, “the brain structure of Navaornis is almost exactly intermediate between Archaeopteryx and modern birds – it was one of these moments in which the missing piece fits absolutely perfectly.”

The fossil was found in 2016 at a location in the nearby neighborhood of Presidente Prudente, and Navaornis is named for William Nava, director of the Museu de Paleontologia de Marília in São Paolo State, Brazil. This location was probably a dry region with slowly moving creeks tens of millions of years ago, which allowed for the fossil’s remarkable preservation. Because of its preservation, the researchers were able to recreate the bird’s brain and skull in remarkably detailed detail using cutting-edge micro-CT scanning technology.

“This fossil is truly so one-of-a-kind that I was awestruck from the moment I first saw it to the moment I finished assembling all the skull bones and the brain, which lets us fully appreciate the anatomy of this early bird,” Navalón said.

According to the study’s principal author, Professor Daniel Field of Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences, “modern birds have some of the most advanced cognitive capabilities in the animal kingdom, comparable only with mammals.” “But scientists have struggled to understand how and when the unique brains and remarkable intelligence of birds evolved—the field has been awaiting the discovery of a fossil exactly like this one.”

The evolutionary transition between the brains of Archaeopteryx and modern birds was essentially unknown prior to this finding. “This represents nearly 70 million years of avian evolution in which all the major lineages of Mesozoic birds originated – including the first representatives of the birds that live today,”  Navalón said. “Navaornis sits right in the middle of this 70-million-year gap and informs us about what happened between these two evolutionary points.”

Even though Navaornis’s head initially looks a lot like that of a little pigeon, a closer look shows that it is actually a member of an ancient bird species known as enantiornithines, or the “opposite birds.”

Although “opposite birds” split from contemporary birds about 130 million years ago, they probably had sophisticated feathers and could fly just as well as modern birds. The Navaornis’s brain structure raises a new puzzle, though:how did opposite birds control their flight without the full suite of brain features observed in living birds, including an expanded cerebellum, which is a living bird’s spatial control centre?

Field, who is also the Strickland Curator of Ornithology at Cambridge’s Museum of Zoology, stated, “This fossil represents a species at the midpoint along the evolutionary journey of bird cognition.” “Its cognitive abilities may have given Navaornis an advantage when it came to finding food or shelter, and it may have been capable of elaborate mating displays or other complex social behaviour.”

Despite being a major accomplishment, the researchers claim the discovery is just the beginning of their understanding of how avian intelligence evolved. How Navaornis interacts with its surroundings may be revealed by future research, which could assist address more general queries regarding the historical development of bird cognition.

Field’s research team has been describing four Mesozoic fossil birds since 2018, including Janavis, Ichthyornis, and Asteriornis (the “Wonderchicken”). Navaornis is the most recent of these birds. By combining cutting-edge visualization and analytical techniques with new fossil findings, the team has uncovered important new information about the origins of birds, the most varied group of vertebrate animals still in existence.

The study was partially funded by UKRI, or UK Research and Innovation. Daniel Field attends Cambridge’s Christ’s College as a Fellow.

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Exosonic, a Startup, Experiences a Supersonic Explosion Before Failing

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The announcement by civilian supersonic startup Exosonic that it is going out of business due to its inability to acquire necessary funding is another illustration of the huge upheaval occurring in the cutting-edge aerospace industry.

Any technological field that experiences a boom goes through several stages, some of which can be quite unpleasant for individuals engaged. I had the good fortune to be writing contracts in Seattle, Washington, which was the core of the internet explosion in the late 1990s.

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In those days, businesses would appear like mushrooms in a park during an autumn rainstorm. Suddenly, a new firm would occupy every available office space, furnishing it with expensive furniture and paying even more to hire employees. It was highly intoxicating, akin to seeing a gold rush. But by 2000, the boom had turned to crash, with the startups disappearing as fast as the figurative mushrooms, leaving just the most resilient.

As the competitors to profit from new developments are pushed aside, a similar shakedown is presently taking place in the more inventive sectors of the aircraft industry. Exosonic, situated in Torrance, California, has joined the ranks of hypersonic engine manufacturer Reaction Engines and eVTOL taxi startup Lilium that have already filed for bankruptcy.

After the collapse of the Concorde, aerospace engineer Norris Tie founded Exospace in 2019 with the goal of creating the next generation of civilian supersonic aircraft. Tie had previously worked at Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. They were somewhat successful, obtaining contracts with the US Air Force to develop supersonic training drones and raising US$6.5 million in finance.

As the competitors to profit from new developments are pushed aside, a similar shakedown is presently taking place in the more inventive sectors of the aircraft industry. Exosonic, situated in Torrance, California, has joined the ranks of hypersonic engine manufacturer Reaction Engines and eVTOL taxi startup Lilium that have already filed for bankruptcy.

After the collapse of the Concorde, aerospace engineer Norris Tie founded Exospace in 2019 with the goal of creating the next generation of civilian supersonic aircraft. Tie had previously worked at Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. They were somewhat successful, obtaining contracts with the US Air Force to develop supersonic training drones and raising US$6.5 million in finance.

“To all that stayed updated on our journey, we thank you for your support and shared love for our company’s vision and mission,” stated Exosonic in a statement. “For those that continue to be in the race, such as Boom Supersonic, Hermeus, Destinus, Venus Aerospace, Spectre Aerospace, and others, we wish you the best on your super/hypersonic campaigns. We will be rooting for you from the sidelines.”

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