GENE JEANIE SCIENTISTS UNRAVEL AN INTRIGUING LINK BETWEEN MEDITATION AND IMMUNITY

For Vijayendran Chandran, a neuroscientist at the University of Florida, the event at the Tennessee mountain retreat center provided an excellent chance to examine the impact of meditation at the molecular level within the body. Because participants’ diet and sleep schedules were closely monitored, he could compare before-and-after blood samples and know that those factors weren’t influencing any changes seen.

“It’s very well-controlled,” Chandran told Inverse. “Everyone eats the same, everyone sleeps the same.”

Meditation seemed to activate genes associated with the immune system. Specifically, Chandran and his co-authors found 220 genes known to be involved in generating an immune response that was effectively turned up following the retreat.

Read more at Inverse

Is the universe actually a fractal?

 If you take a look at the structures that form in the Universe, many of the things we see on large scales appears at smaller scales, too. The dark matter halos that form around the largest bound structures we know of appear identical to the ones that form around Milky Way-sized galaxies, as well as the tiny substructure clumps that exist both around smaller galaxies and in intergalactic space itself. On the largest scales in the Universe, gravitation is the only force that matters. Under many circumstances, if you wait long enough, gravitational collapse will produce identical structures, just scaled up or down in size depending on the size of your system.

The idea that, if you zoom in far enough, you’ll eventually encounter a structure that repeats the initial pattern you saw on larger scales, is mathematically realized in the concept of a fractal. When similar patterns repeatedly emerge at smaller and smaller scales, we can analyze them mathematically and see if they have the same statistical characteristics as the larger structures; if they do, it’s fractal-like in nature. So, is the Universe itself a fractal?

The answer appears to be almost, but not quite. Here’s the science behind why.

Read More at Big Think

Endless Creation Out of Nothing: Could our universe have been an experiment by an ancient civilization?

 

Credit: Getty Images

Astronauts describe the emptiness and darkness of space far from Earth as a startling experience. So did the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in a poem e-mailed to me by writer Dror Burstein. Without ever having ventured into space (obviously), Rilke wrote a century ago: “Night, shuddering in my regard, but in yourself so steady; inexhaustible creation, enduring beyond the fate of earth.”


Is there a modern scientific interpretation to Rilke’s poem?

The reality is that space in neither empty nor dark. Even outside galaxies, an astronaut could find at least one proton, on average, in every cubic meter. Also, one electron and half a billion photons and neutrinos, all left over from the big bang.  Still, one might naively imagine that the space in between these particles is empty. Indeed, the early atomists in ancient Greece thought that the vacuum is literally nothing.

Read more at Scientific America

Is the Universe a Fractal?

We find examples of fractals everywhere in nature. Tree branches, snowflakes, river deltas, cloud formations, and more. So it’s natural to ask the ultimate question: is the entire universe one giant fractal? The answer is…no, but sorta yes.

Benoit Mandelbrot, who pretty much everyone agrees introduced the modern concept of fractals into the world (and even coined the term), was the first to wonder if our universe might be in the form of a fractal. At the time, astronomers had just begun constructing extensive deep-space catalogs of galaxies, and were just beginning to piece together the large-scale structure of the universe.

Since fractals are everywhere, maybe everywhere is a fractal. Maybe when you zoom out and see a particular pattern of galaxies, you can zoom out even further and find the same pattern repeated. And so on and so on, all the way to infinity.

Read more at Universe today

An Entire Swarm of Black Holes Has Been Caught Moving Through The Milky Way

 A fluffy cluster of stars spilling across the sky may have a secret hidden in its heart: a swarm of over 100 stellar-mass black holes.

If this finding can be validated, it will explain how the cluster came to be the way it is - with its stars spaced light-years apart, smearing out into a stellar stream stretching across 30,000 light-years.

The star cluster in question is called Palomar 5, located around 80,000 light-years away. Such globular clusters are often considered 'fossils' of the early Universe. They're very dense and spherical, typically containing roughly 100,000 to 1 million very old stars; some, like NGC 6397, are nearly as old as the Universe itself.

Read more at Science Alert.com

Astronomers have found a planet like Earth orbiting a star like the sun

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered its first Earth-size planet in its star’s habitable zone, the range of distances where conditions may be just right to allow the presence of liquid water on the surface. Scientists confirmed the find, called TOI 700 d, using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and have modeled the planet’s potential environments to help inform future observations.

TOI 700 d is one of only a few Earth-size planets discovered in a star's habitable zone so far. Others include several planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system and other worlds discovered by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope.

“TESS was designed and launched specifically to find Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby stars,” said Paul Hertz, astrophysics division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Planets around nearby stars are easiest to follow-up with larger telescopes in space and on Earth. Discovering TOI 700 d is a key science finding for TESS. Confirming the planet’s size and habitable zone status with Spitzer is another win for Spitzer as it approaches the end of science operations this January."

Read more at NASA

Earth’s magnetic field is mysteriously weakening, causing satellites and spacecraft to malfunction

Image by mcbeaner from Pixabay 

The Earth's magnetic field is weakening between Africa and South America, causing issues for satellites and space craft.

Scientists studying the phenomenon observed that an area known as the South Atlantic Anomaly has grown considerably in recent years, though the reason for it is not entirely clear.

Using data gathered by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Swarm constellation of satellites, researchers noted that the area of the anomaly dropped in strength by more than 8 per cent between 1970 and 2020.

"The new, eastern minimum of the South Atlantic Anomaly has appeared over the last decade and in recent years is developing vigorously," said Jürgen Matzka, from the German Research Centre for Geosciences.

"We are very lucky to have the Swarm satellites in orbit to investigate the development of the South Atlantic Anomaly. The challenge now is to understand the processes in Earth's core driving theses changes."

Read more at Independent