- Jellyfish are not the ‘simple creatures’ once thought: New study may change an understanding of our own brains Fox News
- Brainless Brilliance: Jellyfish Stun Scientists With Learning Skills SciTechDaily
- A species of jellyfish carrying one of the most deadly venoms in the world is capable of learning despite not having a brain, new research shows Yahoo! Voices
- Can Cells Learn? Can Molecules Communicate? What We Are Learning… Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence
- A species of jellyfish carrying one of the most deadly venoms in the world is capable of learning despite not Business Insider India
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: jellyfish
Brainless jellyfish wows scientists with its ability to learn – Times of India – IndiaTimes
- Brainless jellyfish wows scientists with its ability to learn – Times of India IndiaTimes
- A deadly jellyfish is capable of learning without a brain: study Business Insider
- Surprising jellyfish finding challenges what’s known about learning and memory CNN
- A species of jellyfish carrying one of the most deadly venoms in the world is capable of learning despite not Business Insider India
- Can Cells Learn? Can Molecules Communicate? What We Are Learning… Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence
- View Full Coverage on Google News
A species of jellyfish carrying one of the most deadly venoms in the world is capable of learning despite not having a brain, new research shows – Yahoo! Voices
- A species of jellyfish carrying one of the most deadly venoms in the world is capable of learning despite not having a brain, new research shows Yahoo! Voices
- Jellyfish are not the ‘simple creatures’ once thought: New study may change an understanding of our own brains Fox News
- Brainless Brilliance: Jellyfish Stun Scientists With Learning Skills SciTechDaily
- New jellyfish study could change the way we view our own brains New York Post
- Can Cells Learn? Can Molecules Communicate? What We Are Learning… Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence
- View Full Coverage on Google News
SpaceX launch spawns spectacular sky ‘jellyfish’ (video, photos)
One of SpaceX’s recent Falcon 9 missions delivered a treat for skywatchers when the launch created a jaw-dropping “jellyfish” in the sky.
The Falcon 9 rocket launched from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Oct. 8, carrying Intelsat’s Galaxy 33 and Galaxy 34 satellites to orbit. The launch took place soon after sunset, meaning the sun illuminated the crystalized exhaust plume from the launch, resulting in spectacular imagery in the early night sky.
A great view of the jellyfish was captured by SpaceX‘s A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship, which also received the Falcon 9’s returning first stage, which landed about 8.5 minutes after launch.
Related: 8 ways that SpaceX has transformed spaceflight
Managed to see the jellyfish from Bermuda pic.twitter.com/oHVYnHSxILOctober 8, 2022
The launch was the record-tying 14th for this particular Falcon 9 first stage, but the views of the glowing twilight halo don’t get old.
The event was also captured by observers thankfully more distant from the launch and landing, including some who caught the sunlit plumes but without the full jellyfish phenomena.
Shadows from Falcon9 rained down on the #SpaceCoast this evening as the rocket and its plume were high enough that the setting sun was still shining. pic.twitter.com/GSBgCpWHW0October 9, 2022
Video shot with my iPhone from 13 miles away. It takes about a minute for the sound to arrive and the sun to light up the plume. #SpaceX #Galaxy 33 and 34. pic.twitter.com/ickFowR9miOctober 8, 2022
A Falcon 9 could be in action again at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station as soon as Friday night (Oct. 14), but the timing of that coming launch won’t be conducive to more sky jellyfish.
Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or on Facebook (opens in new tab).
‘Immortal jellyfish’: New study from Spain could unearth the secret to how this species reverses aging
In their study, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Maria Pascual-Torner, Victor Quesada and colleagues at the University of Oviedo mapped the genetic sequence of Turritopsis dohrnii, the only known species of jellyfish able to repeatedly revert back into a larval stage after sexual reproduction.
Like other types of jellyfish, the T. dohrnii goes through a two-part life cycle, living on the sea floor during an asexual phase, where its chief role is to stay alive during times of food scarcity. When conditions are right, jellyfish reproduce sexually.
Although many types of jellyfish have some capacity to reverse aging and revert to a larval stage, most lose this ability once they reach sexual maturity, the authors wrote. Not so for T. dohrnii.
“We’ve known about this species being able to do a little evolutionary trickery for maybe 15-20 years,” said Monty Graham, a jellyfish expert and director of the Florida Institute of Oceanography, who was not involved in the research.
This trick earned the species its nickname as the “immortal jellyfish,” a term Graham admits is a bit hyperbolic.
The study was aimed at understanding what made this jellyfish different by comparing the genetic sequence of T. dohrnii to that of Turritopsis rubra, a close genetic cousin that lacks the ability to rejuvenate after sexual reproduction.
What they found is that T. dohrnii has variations in its genome that may make it better at copying and repairing DNA. They also appear to be better at maintaining the ends of chromosomes called telomeres. In humans and other species, telomere length has been shown to shorten with age.
Graham said the research has no immediate commercial value.
“We can’t look at it as, hey, we are going to harvest these jellyfish and turn it into a skin cream,” he said.
It has more to do with understanding the processes and protein functionality that helps these jellyfish cheat death.
“It’s one of those papers that I do think will open up a door to a new line of study that’s worth pursuing.”
‘Space jellyfish’ over Georgia explained
SPACE JELLYFISHFrom today’s SpaceX launch. Beautiful pic.twitter.com/98mzIGHDOmMay 6, 2022
In the wee morning hours of Thursday(May 5), a camera in Waycross, Georgia witnessed a mysterious object streaking through the sky. Bright, fast and trailed by a glowing oblong aura, the object looked a bit like a space jellyfish, as Chris Combs, a professor of aerodynamics and mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio put it on twitter.
Of course, as Combs pointed out, this space jelly was no UFO – it was a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launching from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, roughly 250 miles (400 kilometers) south of the camera. Dozens of rockets leave the launchpad at Kennedy every year, but few of them could rightly be mistaken for a bioluminescent invertebrate in the sky. So, what happened here?
According to Combs, it’s a combination of physics and perfect timing.
For starters, the long, blobby “body” of the jellyfish is simply exhaust leaving the Falcon 9’s rocket engine nozzle, Combs wrote. The reason the exhaust takes on such a bulbous shape has to do with the pressure difference inside and outside the nozzle. In this case, the exhaust leaving the nozzle is “under-expanded” – meaning the gas is at higher pressure than the ambient air around it as the exhaust leaves the engine’s nozzle.
To match the ambient background pressure in the atmosphere, the rocket exhaust drops its own pressure by expanding as soon as it leaves the nozzle, according to Combs.
“In under-expanded exhaust you get expansion fans at the nozzle exit to decrease pressure and match background: jellyfish, at high altitude,” Combs tweeted.
That explains the blob. But what about the glow?
This is much simpler to square, Combs said – and it just comes down to timing. Because the rocket launch occurred in the pre-dawn hours of Thursday morning (around 5:45 a.m. local time), light from the sun came from just over the horizon, illuminating up the exhaust plume, causing it to glow brightly against the dark sky.
Physics plus perfect timing equals space jellyfish. A simple equation for a high-altitude spectacle.
Of course, if you’d like to see a real space jellyfish, you’ll need to look just a bit further into space – about 300 million light-years further to be exact. That’s how far away the galaxy cluster Abell 2877 is; when astronomers recently looked at the object with a radio telescope, they saw the ghostly outline of a jellyfish swimming through distant space. That big jelly in the sky is also the result of a large gas explosion – in this case, a massive eruption from a gaggle of ancient black holes, Live Science previously reported.
Originally published on Live Science.
Cool ‘space jellyfish’ seen at night after SpaceX launch
A SpaceX launch left a wild phenomenon in the sky as the Falcon 9 rocket traveled to space at break-neck speeds.
Clear weather conditions and early morning sun rays lit up the rocket’s exhaust plume creating a “space jellyfish”.
On average, Elon Musk and SpaceX will launch a rocket once a week this year.
This morning, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 53 Starlink satellites made a successful launch and left behind a fascinating glow in the sky.
“Basically, what’s happening is, it’s still dark outside, but you have the sun illuminating the plume as it’s in space,” a SpaceX executive said.
The rocket took off at 5.43 am this morning from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
When the Falcon 9 rocket lifts off with almost two million pounds of thrust, the fuel is exploded in a combustion chamber.
In a paper published by the Glenn Research Center, NASA wrote “The combustion produces hot exhaust which is passed through a nozzle to accelerate the flow and produce thrust.”
The hot exhaust was illuminated as the Falcon 9 reached heights where sun rays were beginning to fill the early morning sky.
Musk tweeted “Another Starlink mission completed” after the satellites were deposited in orbit.
Starlink is a subdivision of SpaceX that beams high-speed internet to customers all over the globe via satellite.
Musk earned heroic treatment from the press when he fast-tracked Starlink terminals to Ukraine at the start of the Russian invasion.
This most recent payload adds to the 132 metric tonnes of equipment SpaceX has deposited in lower Earth orbit.
The next launch is scheduled for May 10th – another round of Starlink satellites will blast off on a Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
While SpaceX and Starlink are ahead of the pack on satellites, Jeff Bezos’ space company is gaining ground.
Project Kuiper is Amazon’s internet-from-space initiative and they have been given clearance from the FCC to put over 3,000 satellites in lower Earth orbit.
This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced here with permission.
Red, alien-like jellyfish with 39 tentacles discovered off California coast
Scientists have discovered a new species of crown jellyfish that looks like a scarlet alien saucer in the sunless “midnight zone” of California’s Monterey Bay.
The newly described species, Atolla reynoldsi, measures about 5 inches (13 centimeters) in diameter and can have anywhere from 26 to 39 tentacles, researchers with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) said in a statement. Like the 10 other known species of the Atolla genus, A. reynoldsi sports a deep groove running around its central bell, giving its body the appearance of a domed head wearing a frilly red crown.
Though it’s not much wider than a dollar bill, A. reynoldsi seems to be the largest of the known species of Atolla jellies, the researchers said. However, what really sets this jelly apart from its cousins is what’s missing; unlike all other currently known species of crown jellyfish, A. reynoldsi lacks a single elongate tentacle — one long, thin tentacle that trails behind its body, measuring up to six times the diameter of the jelly’s bell.
According to the researchers, a crown jelly uses this extended appendage to help snag prey, which can include crustaceans, siphonophores (rope-like gelatinous animals) and other small creatures that pass through the ocean’s midnight zone — the deep, sunless region of the ocean that extends from 3,300 to 13,100 feet (1,000 to 4,000 m) below the water’s surface.
While analyzing thousands of hours of footage taken in the Monterey Bay’s midnight zone between April 2006 and June 2021, MBARI researchers occasionally spotted crown jellies that lacked the signature trailing tentacle. The team suspected that they had discovered three new crown jelly species in the Bay, but sightings were too rare to prove it.
Now, in a new study published March 16 in the journal Animals, the researchers have conclusively identified one of the unknown jellies as the new species A. reynoldsi. The team studied 10 specimens of the mysterious crown jelly, including both physical specimens and sightings from archival footage, to conclude that the species is “molecularly and morphologically distinct” from all other known species in the genus — that is, it looks different both physically and genetically from its cousins.
A. reynoldsi has so far only been spotted in the Monterey Bay, swimming at depths of 3,323 to 10,463 feet (1,013 to 3,189 m).
“These remarkable new jellies underscore how much we still have to learn about the deep sea,” lead study author George Matsumoto, a senior education and research specialist at MBARI, said in the statement. “On just about every dive into the depths of Monterey Bay, we learn something new.”
MBARI researchers have identified more than 225 new species over the past 34 years, according to the institute. The two other crown jelly species observed without trailing tentacles may well end up being classified as new Atolla species in the future, the researchers added — however, more observations are still required.
Originally published on Live Science.
An Enormous ‘Radio Jellyfish’ Just Rose From The Dead in The Night Sky
Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in the Universe bound together by gravity. They can contain thousands of galaxies, enormous oceans of hot gas, invisible islands of dark matter and – sometimes – the glowing ghost of a jellyfish or two.
In the galaxy cluster Abell 2877, located in the southern sky about 300 million light-years from Earth, astronomers have discovered one such jellyfish.
Visible only in a narrow band of radio light, the cosmic jelly is more than 1 million light-years wide and includes a large lobe of supercharged plasma, dripping with tentacles of hot gas.
The structure’s jelly-like appearance is both “ghostly” and “uncanny,” according to the authors of a new paper published March 17 in the Astrophysical Journal.
However, even more astonishing than the space jelly’s shape is how quickly the structure vanishes from view, the authors said.
Related: 12 Trippy objects hidden in the Zodiac
“This radio jellyfish holds a world record of sorts,” lead study author Torrance Hodgson, of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Perth, Australia, said in a statement.
“Whilst it’s bright at regular FM radio frequencies, at 200 megahertz the emission all but disappears. No other extragalactic emission like this has been observed to disappear anywhere near so rapidly.”
The ghost of jellyfish past
The Universe is swimming with energetic structures that are only visible in radio wavelengths, like the mysterious X-shaped galaxies cartwheeling through space, or the twin blobs at the center of the Milky Way.
However, no structure this large has ever been observed in such a narrow band of the radio spectrum.
According to the researchers, that likely means this cosmic jellyfish is actually an odd bird known as a “radio phoenix.”
Like the mythical bird that died in flame and rose again from the ashes, a radio phoenix is a cosmic structure that’s born from a high-energy explosion (like a black hole outburst), fades over millions of years as the structure expands and its electrons lose energy, then finally gets reenergized by another cosmic cataclysm (such as the collision of two galaxies).
To create a radio phoenix, that last cosmic event must be powerful enough to send shockwaves surging through the dormant cloud of electrons, causing the cloud to compress and the electrons to spark with energy again.
According to the study authors, that could cause a structure like the jellyfish cluster to glow brightly in certain radio wavelengths, but dim rapidly in others.
“Our working theory is that around 2 billion years ago, a handful of supermassive black holes from multiple galaxies spewed out powerful jets of plasma,” Hodgson said.
That plasma’s energy faded over millions of years, until “quite recently, two things happened – the plasma started mixing at the same time as very gentle shock waves passed through the system,” Hodgson said.
“This has briefly reignited the plasma, lighting up the jellyfish and its tentacles for us to see.”
The researchers used a computer simulation to show that this explanation is a plausible origin story for that big jellyfish in the sky, though several big questions – such as where the “gentle shockwaves” came from – remain unanswered.
The team hopes to take a closer look at the jellyfish in the future, following the completion of the Square Kilometre Array – a network of hundreds of radio telescope antennas planned for construction in the Australian outback.
Related content:
The 15 weirdest galaxies in our Universe