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Business

Jeff Bezos reclaims spot as world’s richest person from Elon Musk

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos reclaimed his title as the world’s richest person after he leapfrogged Tesla CEO Elon Musk, according to real-time data from Forbes.

Musk saw his net worth slide by $3.9 billion on Tuesday as Tesla shares closed at $796.22, down more than 2.4%. The 49-year-old entrepreneur surpassed Bezos in January to become the richest person in the world, on the back of Tesla’s surging share price and his generous pay package.

Musk gave back the title of world’s richest person to Bezos just as quickly as he rose in the rankings. Until last month, Bezos had been the richest man since 2017.

The Amazon founder’s personal wealth, which is mostly in Amazon stock, has skyrocketed in recent years along with the company’s share price. Bezos has continued to notch new wealth milestones. Last August, he became the first person to see their net worth surge above $200 billion and in 2018 he became the world’s richest man in recent history when his personal wealth climbed above $150 billion.

Bezos once again became the world’s richest person as he prepares to leave his post later this year. Earlier this month, Bezos announced he would turn the helm over to Amazon’s top cloud boss Andy Jassy. Bezos is expected to still keep an eye on the company he founded, but he will have more time to focus on other projects, including his Blue Origin rocket company and The Washington Post, as well as philanthropic ventures the Bezos Earth Fund and the Amazon Day 1 Fund.

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Health

How Scientists Are Trying to Spot New Viruses Before They Cause Pandemics

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Back in the summer, Dr. Michael Mina made a deal with a cold storage company. With many of its restaurant clients closed down, the firm had freezers to spare. And Dr. Mina, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, had a half-million vials of plasma from human blood coming to his lab from across the country, samples dating back to the carefree days of January 2020.

The vials, now in three hulking freezers outside Dr. Mina’s lab, are at the center of a pilot project for what he and his collaborators call the Global Immunological Observatory. They envision an immense surveillance system that can check blood from all over the world for the presence of antibodies to hundreds of viruses at once. That way, when the next pandemic washes over us, scientists will have detailed, real-time information on how many people have been infected by the virus and how their bodies responded.

It might even offer some early notice, like a tornado warning. Although this monitoring system will not be able to detect new viruses or variants directly, it could show when large numbers of people start acquiring immunity to a particular kind of virus.

The human immune system keeps a record of pathogens it has met before, in the form of antibodies that fight against them and then stick around for life. By testing for these antibodies, scientists can get a snapshot of which flu viruses you have had, what that rhinovirus was that breezed through you last fall, even whether you had a respiratory syncytial virus as a child. Even if an infection never made you sick, it would still be picked up by this diagnostic method, called serological testing.

“We’re all like little recorders,” keeping track of viruses without realizing it, Dr. Mina said.

This type of readout from the immune system is different from a test that looks for an active viral infection. The immune system starts to produce antibodies one to two weeks after an infection begins, so serology is retrospective, looking back at what you have caught. Also, closely related viruses may produce similar responses, provoking antibodies that bind to the same kinds of viral proteins. That means carefully designed assays are needed to distinguish between different coronaviruses, for example.

But serology uncovers things that virus testing does not, said Derek Cummings, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida. With a large database of samples and clinical details, scientists can begin to see patterns emerge in how the immune system responds in someone with no symptoms compared to someone struggling to clear the virus. Serology can also reveal before an outbreak starts whether a population has robust immunity to a given virus, or if it is dangerously low.

“You want to understand what has happened in a population, and how prepared that population is for future attacks of a particular pathogen,” Dr. Cummings said.

The approach could also detect events in the viral ecosystem that otherwise go unnoticed, Dr. Cummings said. For example, the 2015 Zika outbreak was detected by doctors in Brazil who noticed a cluster of babies with abnormally small heads, born seven to nine months after their mothers were infected. “A serological observatory could conceivably have picked this up before then,” he said.

Serological surveys are often small and difficult to set up, since they require drawing blood from volunteers. But for several years Dr. Mina and his colleagues have been discussing the idea of a large and automated surveillance system using leftover samples from routine lab tests.

“Had we had it set up in 2019, then when this virus hit the U.S., we would have had ready access to data that would have allowed us to see it circulating in New York City, for example, without doing anything different,” Dr. Mina said.

Although the observatory would not have been able to identify the new coronavirus, it would have revealed an unusually high number of infections from the coronavirus family, which includes those that cause common colds. It might also have shown that the new coronavirus was interacting with patients’ immune systems in unexpected ways, resulting in telltale markers in the blood. That would have been a signal to start genetic sequencing of patient samples, to identify the culprit, and might have provided grounds to shut down the city earlier, Dr. Mina said. (Similarly, serology would not be able to spot the emergency of a new virus variant, like the contagious coronavirus variants that were discovered in South Africa and England before spreading elsewhere. For that, researchers must rely on standard genomic sequencing of virus test samples.)

The observatory would require agreements with hospitals, blood banks and other sources of blood, as well as a system for acquiring consent from patients and donors. It also faces the problem of financing, noted Alex Greninger, a virologist at the University of Washington. Health insurance companies would be unlikely to foot the bill, since serology tests are usually not used by doctors to treat people.

Dr. Mina estimated that the observatory would cost about $100 million to get off the ground. He pointed out that, according to his calculations, the federal government has allocated more than twice that much to diagnostics company Ellume to produce enough rapid Covid tests to cover the American demand for only a handful of days. A pathogen observatory, he said, is like a weather forecasting system that draws on vast numbers of buoys and sensors around the globe, passively reporting on events where and when they arise. These systems have been funded by government grants and are widely valued.

The predictive power of serology is worth the investment, said Jessica Metcalf, an epidemiologist at Princeton and one of the observatory team members. A few years ago, she and her collaborators found in a smaller survey that immunity to measles was ominously low in Madagascar. Indeed, in 2018 an outbreak took hold, killing more than 10,000 children.

Now, the half-million plasma samples in Dr. Mina’s freezers, collected by the plasma donation company Octopharma from sites across the country last year, are starting to undergo serological tests focused on the new coronavirus, funded by a $2 million grant from Open Philanthropy. Testing had to wait for the researchers to set up a new robotic testing facility and process the samples, but now they are working through their first batches.

The team hopes to use this data to show how the virus flowed into the United States, week by week, and how immunity to Covid has grown and changed. They also hope it will spark interest in using serology to illuminate the movement of many more viruses.

“The big idea is to show the world that you don’t have to spend huge dollars to do this kind of work,” Dr. Mina said. “We should have this happening all the time.”

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Health

How Scientists Are Trying to Spot New Viruses Before They Cause Pandemics

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“Had we had it set up in 2019, then when this virus hit the U.S., we would have had ready access to data that would have allowed us to see it circulating in New York City, for example, without doing anything different,” Dr. Mina said.

Although the observatory would not have been able to identify the new coronavirus, it would have revealed an unusually high number of infections from the coronavirus family, which includes those that cause common colds. It might also have shown that the new coronavirus was interacting with patients’ immune systems in unexpected ways, resulting in telltale markers in the blood. That would have been a signal to start genetic sequencing of patient samples, to identify the culprit, and might have provided grounds to shut down the city earlier, Dr. Mina said. (Similarly, serology would not be able to spot the emergency of a new virus variant, like the contagious coronavirus variants that were discovered in South Africa and England before spreading elsewhere. For that, researchers must rely on standard genomic sequencing of virus test samples.)

The observatory would require agreements with hospitals, blood banks and other sources of blood, as well as a system for acquiring consent from patients and donors. It also faces the problem of financing, noted Alex Greninger, a virologist at the University of Washington. Health insurance companies would be unlikely to foot the bill, since serology tests are usually not used by doctors to treat people.

Dr. Mina estimated that the observatory would cost about $100 million to get off the ground. He pointed out that, according to his calculations, the federal government has allocated more than twice that much to diagnostics company Ellume to produce enough rapid Covid tests to cover the American demand for only a handful of days. A pathogen observatory, he said, is like a weather forecasting system that draws on vast numbers of buoys and sensors around the globe, passively reporting on events where and when they arise. These systems have been funded by government grants and are widely valued.

The predictive power of serology is worth the investment, said Jessica Metcalf, an epidemiologist at Princeton and one of the observatory team members. A few years ago, she and her collaborators found in a smaller survey that immunity to measles was ominously low in Madagascar. Indeed, in 2018 an outbreak took hold, killing more than 10,000 children.

Now, the half-million plasma samples in Dr. Mina’s freezers, collected by the plasma donation company Octopharma from sites across the country last year, are starting to undergo serological tests focused on the new coronavirus, funded by a $2 million grant from Open Philanthropy. Testing had to wait for the researchers to set up a new robotic testing facility and process the samples, but now they are working through their first batches.

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Science

New Technique Used to Spot Possible Super-Earth in Alpha Centauri’s Habitable Zone

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Astronomers using a new technique may have not only found a super-Earth at a neighbouring star, but they may also have directly imaged it. And it could be nice and cozy in the habitable zone around Alpha Centauri.

 

It’s much easier to see giant planets than Earth-size planets. No matter which detection method is being used, larger planets are simply a larger needle in the cosmic haystack. But overall, astronomers are very interested in planets that are similar to Earth. And finding them is much more difficult.

We thought we’d have to wait for the ultra-powerful telescopes currently being built before we could directly image exoplanets.

Facilities like the Giant Magellan Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope will bring enormous observing power to bear on the task of exoplanet imaging.

But a team of researchers have developed a new technique that might do the job. They say they’ve imaged a possible sub-Neptune/super-Earth-sized planet orbiting one of our nearest neighbours, Alpha Centauri A.

The team presented their observations in an article in Nature Communications titled “Imaging low-mass planets within the habitable zone of α Centauri.” The lead author is Kevin Wagner, an astronomer and Sagan Fellow at the University of Arizona.

While astronomers have found low-mass exoplanets before, they’ve never sensed their light. They’ve watched as the planets revealed themselves by tugging on their stars. And they’ve watched as the light from the stars that host these planets dips when the planet passes in front of the star.

 

But they’ve never directly imaged one. Until now, maybe.

This new detection method comes down to the infrared. One of the challenges in imaging Earth-sized exoplanets in infrared is to discern the light coming from an exoplanet when that light is washed out by all of the background infrared radiation from the star.

Astronomers can search for exoplanets in wavelengths where the background infrared is diminished, but in those same wavelengths, temperate Earth-like planets are faint.

One method is to look in the near-infrared (NIR) part of the spectrum. In NIR, the thermal glow of the planet is not so washed out by the star. But the starlight is still blinding, and millions of times brighter than the planet. So just looking in the NIR is not a total solution.

The solution may be the NEAR (New Earths in the AlphaCen Region) instrument used in this research. NEAR is mounted on the ESO (European Southern Observatory’s) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. It works with the VISIR instrument, also on the VLT. The group behind NEAR is the Breakthrough Watch, part of Yuri Milner’s Breakthrough Initiatives.

 

The NEAR instrument not only observes in the desirable part of the infrared spectrum, but it also employs a coronagraph.

The Breakthrough group thought that the NEAR instrument used on an 8-meter ground-based telescope would allow for better observations of the Alpha Centauri system and its planets.

So they built the instrument in collaboration with the ESO and installed it on the Very Large Telescope.

This new finding came as a result of 100 hours of cumulative observations with NEAR and the VLT.

“These results,” the authors write, “demonstrate the feasibility of imaging rocky habitable-zone exoplanets with current and upcoming telescopes.”

The 100-hour commissioning run was meant to demonstrate the power of the instrument.

The team says that based on about 80 percent of the best images from that run, the NEAR instrument is an order of magnitude better than other methods for observing “…warm sub-Neptune-sized planets throughout much of the habitable zone of α Centauri A.”

They also, possibly, found a planet. “We also discuss a possible exoplanet or exozodiacal disk detection around? Centauri A,” they write. “However, an instrumental artifact of unknown origin cannot be ruled out.”

 

This isn’t the first time astronomers have found exoplanets in the Alpha Centauri system.

There are a couple of confirmed planets in the system, and there are also other candidates.

But none of them have been directly imaged like this new potential planet, which has the placeholder name C1, and is the first potential detection around the M-dwarf in the system, Proxima Centauri.

Follow-up observations will have to confirm or cancel the discovery.

It’s exciting to think that a warm-Neptune class exoplanet could be orbiting a Sun-like star in our nearest neighbouring star system. One of the Breakthrough Initiatives goals is to send lightsail spacecraft to the Alpha Centauri system and give us a closer look.

But that prospect is out of reach for now. And in some ways, this discovery isn’t so much about the planet, but about the technology developed to detect it.

The large majority of discovered exoplanets are gigantic planets similar in mass to Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune. They’re the easiest to find. But as humans from Earth, we’re predominantly interested in planets like our own.

Earth-like planets in a star’s habitable zone get us excited about prospects for life on another planet. But they can also tell us a lot about our own Solar System, and how solar systems in general form and evolve.

If C1 does turn out to be a planet, then the Breakthrough group has succeeded in a vital endeavour. They’re the first to detect an Earth-like planet by direct imaging.

Not only that, but they did it with an 8-meter, ground-based telescope and an instrument specifically designed and developed to detect these types of planets in the Alpha Centauri system.

The authors are confident that NEAR can perform well, even in comparison to much larger telescopes. The conclusion of the paper contains a description of the overall sensitivity of the instrument. Then they write that “This would in principle be sufficient to detect an Earth-analog planet around α Centauri A (~20 µJy) in just a few hours, which is consistent with expectations for the ELTs.”

The E-ELT will have a 39-meter primary mirror. One of its capabilities and design goals is to image exoplanets, especially smaller, Earth-size ones, directly.

Of course, the E-ELT will be an enormously powerful telescope that will undoubtedly fuel scientific discovery for a long time, not just in exoplanet imaging but in a variety of other ways.

And other gigantic ground-based telescopes will change the exoplanet imaging game, too.

What took hours for NEAR to see may take only minutes for the E-ELT, the Thirty Meter Telescope, or the Giant Magellan Telescope to see.

NEAR can’t compete with those telescopes and was never meant to.

But if these results are confirmed, then NEAR has succeeded where nobody else has, and for a fraction of the price of a new telescope.

Either way, what NEAR has accomplished likely represents the future of exoplanet research. Rather than broad-based surveys like Kepler and TESS, scientists will soon be able to focus on individual planets.

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

 

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Science

Astronomers spot bizarre, never-before-seen activity from one of the strongest magnets in the universe

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Artist’s impression of the active magnetar Swift J1818.0-1607. Credit: Carl Knox, OzGrav.

Astronomers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) and CSIRO have just observed bizarre, never-seen-before behavior from a radio-loud magnetar—a rare type of neutron star and one of the strongest magnets in the universe.

Their new findings, published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS), suggest magnetars have more complex magnetic fields than previously thought, which may challenge theories of how they are born and evolve over time.

Magnetars are a rare type of rotating neutron star with some of the most powerful magnetic fields in the universe. Astronomers have detected only 30 of these objects in and around the Milky Way—most of them detected by X-ray telescopes following a high-energy outburst.

However, a handful of these magnetars have also been seen to emit radio pulses similar to pulsars—the less-magnetic cousins of magnetars that produce beams of radio waves from their magnetic poles. Tracking how the pulses from these radio-loud magnetars change over time offers a unique window into their evolution and geometry.

In March 2020, a new magnetar named Swift J1818.0-1607 (J1818 for short) was discovered after it emitted a bright X-ray burst. Rapid follow-up observations detected radio pulses originating from the magnetar. Curiously, the appearance of the radio pulses from J1818 were quite different from those detected from other radio-loud magnetars.

Most radio pulses from magnetars maintain a consistent brightness across a wide range of observing frequencies. However, the pulses from J1818 were much brighter at low frequencies than high frequencies—similar to what is seen in pulsars, another more common type of radio-emitting neutron star.

In order to better understand how J1818 would evolve over time, a team led by scientists from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) observed it eight times using the CSIRO Parkes radio telescope (also known as Murriyang) between May and October 2020.

During this time, they found the magnetar underwent a brief identity crisis: In May it was still emitting the unusual pulsar-like pulses that had been detected previously; however, by June, it had started flickering between a bright and a weak state. This flickering behavior reached a peak in July, when the astronomers saw it flickering back and forth between pulsar-like and magnetar-like radio pulses.

“This bizarre behavior has never been seen before in any other radio-loud magnetar,” explains study lead author and Swinburne University/CSIRO Ph.D. student Marcus Lower. “It appears to have only been a short-lived phenomenon, as by our next observation, it had settled permanently into this new magnetar-like state.”

The scientists also looked for pulse shape and brightness changes at different radio frequencies and compared their observations to a 50-year-old theoretical model. This model predicts the expected geometry of a pulsar, based on the twisting direction of its polarized light.

“From our observations, we found that the magnetic axis of J1818 isn’t aligned with its rotation axis,” says Lower. “Instead, the radio-emitting magnetic pole appears to be in its southern hemisphere, located just below the equator. Most other magnetars have magnetic fields that are aligned with their spin axes or are a little ambiguous. This is the first time we have definitively seen a magnetar with a misaligned magnetic pole.”

Remarkably, this magnetic geometry appears to be stable over most observations. This suggests any changes in the pulse profile are simply due to variations in the height the radio pulses are emitted above the neutron star surface. However, the August 1st 2020 observation stands out as a curious exception.

“Our best geometric model for this date suggests that the radio beam briefly flipped over to a completely different magnetic pole located in the northern hemisphere of the magnetar,” says Lower.

A distinct lack of any changes in the magnetar’s pulse profile shape indicate the same magnetic field lines that trigger the ‘normal’ radio pulses must also be responsible for the pulses seen from the other magnetic pole.

The study suggests this is evidence that the radio pulses from J1818 originate from loops of magnetic field lines connecting two closely spaced poles, like those seen connecting the two poles of a horseshoe magnet or sunspots on the sun. This is unlike most ordinary neutron stars, which are expected to have north and south poles on opposite sides of the star that are connected by a donut-shaped magnetic field.

This peculiar magnetic field configuration is also supported by an independent study of the X-rays pulses from J1818 that were detected by the NICER telescope on board the International Space Station. The X-rays appear to come from either a single distorted region of magnetic field lines that emerge from the magnetar surface or two smaller, but closely spaced, regions.

These discoveries have potential implications for computer simulations of how magnetars are born and evolve over long periods of time, as more complex magnetic field geometries will change how quickly their magnetic fields are expected to decay over time. Additionally, theories that suggest fast radio bursts can originate from magnetars will have to account for radio pulses potentially originating from multiple active sites within their magnetic fields.

Catching a flip between magnetic poles in action could also afford the first opportunity to map the magnetic field of a magnetar.

“The Parkes telescope will be watching the magnetar closely over the next year” says scientist and study co-author Simon Johnston, from the CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science.

Mysterious spinning neutron star detected in the Milky Way proves to be an extremely rare discovery

More information:
M E Lower et al. The dynamic magnetosphere of Swift J1818.0−1607, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2020). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staa3789

Marcus E. Lower, et al. The dynamic magnetosphere of Swift J1818.0−1607 arxiv.org/abs/2011.12463 arXiv:2011.12463v2 [astro-ph.HE] T

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Entertainment

‘Bridgerton’ fans spot blunder in Netflix show — a yellow traffic line

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Netflix announced that they have crossed the 200 million subscribers milestone, thanks to a strong fourth quarter of 2020.

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Eagle-eyed fans have spotted a modern-day blunder in the opening moments of the runaway hit Netflix period drama “Bridgerton.”

The torrid romance, based on the first of eight novels by Julia Quinn, has proved a must-watch escape for many since its Christmas debut, and has been renewed for a second Netflix season. 

While the tale of sex and scandal is set in Regency era London, early 19th century, a painted yellow traffic line was clear on the road used, for dramatic purposes, by horse-drawn carriages.

Just as fans noticed the Starbucks cup and then the water bottle in the finale of “Game of Thrones,” “Bridgerton” fans drew the line at this error (it is at the 3:20 mark in the episode).

“Given that characters were still travelling around by horse-drawn carriage, there’s no way that the inclusion would have been historically accurate or, we can presume, intentional,” wrote Britain’s Independent newspaper in first reporting the “Bridgerton” goof.

Loved ‘Bridgerton’?: Here are 5 great TV shows to watch while you wait for Season 2

“Really enjoying Bridgerton, but with the technology available to film makers these days, a yellow line?” wrote one Twitter user.

“Two episodes into #Bridgerton and I’ve so far spotted a single yellow line and a telecoms manhole cover. I didn’t realise the 19th Century Brits were such pioneers…” wrote another on Twitter.

Another Twitter user pointed out “a single yellow line parking restriction and a parking sign on a lamppost” among other small issues in the series. “Still a great one to watch though,” the user added.

USA TODAY has reached out to Netflix for comment.

Show creator Chris Van Dusen appeared on the “Today” show Thursday to discuss what fans can expect from season two.

“We are going to be starting filming later this spring in London, and we’re all so excited,” Van Dusen said. “I know the cast cannot wait to get back to it, and neither can I.”

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Entertainment

Bridgerton fans spot unfortunate filming blunder in Netflix drama

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Bridgerton is already the talk of Netflix but fans have now spotted another hot topic on the glitzy period drama, and it’s a ‘scandal’ worthy of the pen of Lady Whistledown herself.

Some viewers of the Shondaland drama series have taken to Twitter to point out that the show features a bit of a visual blunder in the opening scenes of its first episode, as in some shots you can clearly see painted yellow lines running along the roadsides of Bath’s Royal Crescent, as horse-drawn carriages travel down them.

Considering that the first season of Bridgerton is set in 1813, over a century before yellow painted lines began to be used on Britain’s roads to restrict parking, this is quite an unusual sight.

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Related: Bridgerton star reveals hardest scene to film

Fans were rather amused by the gaffe, with one writing on Twitter: “Really enjoying Bridgerton, but with the technology available to film makers these days, a yellow line?” and sharing a photo of one of the offending shots.

Another tweeted: “Two episodes into #Bridgerton and I’ve so far spotted a single yellow line and a telecoms manhole cover. I didn’t realise the 19th Century Brits were such pioneers…”

Could there be some sort of time-travelling scandal yet to be revealed in the ton? We doubt it, but there’s no harm in speculating about what could be to come in future seasons of the drama.

We now know for sure that Bridgerton will be getting a second season following the huge ratings success of season one.

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Netflix has confirmed that a second season is on the way and that the next run of episodes will shift the focus to the eldest Bridgerton sibling, Anthony (Jonathan Bailey), as he takes on the brutal social season once again in his quest for love.

Bridgerton is based on a series of eight novels by author Julia Quinn, with the second book of the series focusing on Anthony, so we can certainly expect him to take centre stage in the next season.

The first season told the story of eldest Bridgerton daughter Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) as she pretended to form a bond with eligible bachelor Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings (Regé-Jean Page) in order to rescue her reputation after being scorned by Lady Whistledown thanks to Anthony’s over-protective behaviour.

Showrunner Chris Van Dusen has exclusively revealed to Digital Spy that he “would love to be able to explore love stories and romance for all of” the Bridgerton siblings, which means that the show could go on for a while yet.

We’re certainly hope so.

Bridgerton season 1 is now available to watch on Netflix.

Bridgerton Collection Volume 1 (books 1-3) by Julia Quinn

Bridgerton: The Duke and I by Julia Quinn

The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn

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An Offer From A Gentleman by Julia Quinn

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Romancing Mr Bridgerton by Julia Quinn

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To Sir Phillip, With Love by Julia Quinn

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When He Was Wicked by Julia Quinn

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It’s In His Kiss by Julia Quinn

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On The Way To The Wedding by Julia Quinn

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The Bridgertons: Happily Ever After by Julia Quinn

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Science

This One Spot on The International Space Station Is Kept Filthy – For Science

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While most of us are now more fastidious about keeping our homes and workplaces clean, on board the International Space Station, cleanliness is imperative.

Of high importance is anti-bacterial measures, since bacteria tend to build up in the constantly-recycled air inside the ISS.

 

Every Saturday in space is “cleaning day” where surfaces are wiped down, and the astronauts vacuum and collect trash.

But there’s one spot on board the station where cleaning is a no-no. But don’t worry, its all for science!

The MatISS experiment, or the Microbial Aerosol Tethering on Innovative Surfaces in the International Space Station tests out five advanced materials and how well they can prevent illness-causing microorganisms from settling and growing in microgravity.

MatISS also has provided insight into how biofilms attach to surfaces in microgravity conditions.

The experiment is sponsored by the French space agency CNES and was conceived of in 2016. Three iterations of the experiment have been used on the ISS.

The first was MatISS-1, and it had four sample holders set up in for six months in three different locations in the European Columbus laboratory module.

This provided some baseline data points for researchers, as when they were returned to Earth, researchers characterized the deposits on each surface and used the control material to establish a reference for the level and type of contamination.

 

MatISS-2 had four identical sample holders containing three different types of materials, installed in a single location in Columbus. This study aimed to better understand how contamination spreads over time across the hydrophobic (water-repellant) and control surfaces.

The upgraded Matiss-2.5 was set up to study how contamination spreads – this time spatially – across the hydrophobic surfaces using patterned samples. This experiment ran for a year and recently the samples were returned to Earth and are now undergoing analysis.

The samples are made of a diverse mix of advanced materials, such as self-assembly monolayers, green polymers, ceramic polymers, and water-repellent hybrid silica.

The smart materials should stop bacteria from sticking and growing over large areas, and effectively making them easier to clean and more hygienic. The experiment hopes to figure out which materials work the best.

ESA says that “understanding the effectiveness and potential use of these materials will be essential to the design of future spacecraft, especially those carrying humans father out in space.”

Long-duration human space missions will certainly need to limit biocontamination of astronaut habitats. 

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

 

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Science

Warm up with this cozy image of a hot spot on Jupiter

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A new composite image of Jupiter’s atmosphere shows a hot spot glowing brightly in infrared wavelengths.

Astronomers and amateur image processors combined data from the NASA Juno spacecraft at Jupiter and the Gemini North Telescope at Mauna Kea, Hawaii, to create the epic image. Although researchers have known about hot spots on Jupiter for more than 25 years, views such as this one give scientists a better understanding of how storms and atmospheric waves contribute to the “elusive” water content in Jupiter’s atmosphere, NASA officials wrote in a statement.

“To the naked eye, Jupiter‘s hot spots appear as dark, cloud-free areas in the planet’s equatorial belt, but at infrared wavelengths they are extremely bright, revealing the warm, deep atmosphere below the clouds,” the statement continued.

In photos: Juno’s amazing views of Jupiter

NASA released the image just weeks after newly public data from the Juno spacecraft revealed that hot spots on Jupiter are wider and deeper than scientists previously realized. Juno gathers its data comes during periodic swoops of Jupiter, called perijoves, which show scientists more about the planet’s atmosphere.

The NASA Galileo spacecraft likely was the first to discover the planet’s hot spots, when it accidentally flew through one on its way to a planned demise in Jupiter’s atmosphere. (The spacecraft was finishing a long mission in 1995 and scientists threw the spacecraft into Jupiter to destroy the spacecraft and eliminate any chance, however small, of contaminating one of Jupiter’s possibly habitable icy moons.)

Galileo found a windy and dry environment as it plunged to its demise, which was not what scientists expected. Researchers thought the spacecraft had found a “desert” in an otherwise moist northern equatorial region, but more recent results from Juno suggest this whole zone is actually quite dry.

NASA recently extended Juno’s mission through 2025, although the spacecraft may not survive that long in the intense radiation environment surrounding Jupiter. But for now, an independent review committee advising NASA on the decision noted, the spacecraft remains healthy and has plenty of power. The extended mission observations will help NASA prepare for its forthcoming Europa Clipper mission to the icy moon of Europa, the panel added.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

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