New feature spotted in brightest gamma-ray burst of all time
July 28, 2024 Evrim Yazgin
NASA’s Fermi Telescope has revealed new details about the brightest of all time gamma-ray burst which may help explain these extreme and mysterious cosmic events.
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) usually last less than a second. They originate from the dense remains of a dead giant star’s core, called a neutron star. But what causes neutron stars to release huge amounts of energy in the form of gamma radiation is still a mystery.
A jet of particles moving at nearly light speed emerges from a massive star in this artist’s concept. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab.
In October 2022, astronomers detected the largest gamma-ray burst ever seen – GRB 221009A. It came from a supernova about 2.4 billion light years away. The event had an intensity at least 10 times greater than any other GRB detected. It was dubbed the BOAT, for brightest of all time.
Now, analysis of the data from that event has revealed the first emission line which can be confidently identified in 50 years of studying GRBs.
Emission lines are created when matter interacts with light. Energy from the light is absorbed and reemitted in ways characteristic to the chemical make up of the matter which is interacting with it.
When the light reaches Earth and is spread out like a rainbow in a spectrum, the absorption and emission lines appear. Emission lines appear as dimmer or even black lines in the spectrum, whereas emission lines are brighter features.
At higher energies, these features in the spectrum can reveal processes between subatomic particles such as matter and anti-matter annihilation which can produces gamma rays.
“While some previous studies have reported possible evidence for absorption and emission features in other GRBs, subsequent scrutiny revealed that all of these could just be statistical fluctuations,” says coauthor Om Sharan Salafia at the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics Brera Observatory in Milan. “What we see in the BOAT is different.”
The emission line appeared almost 5 minutes after the burst was detected. It lasted about 40 seconds.
It peaked at 12 million electron volts of energy – millions of times more energetic than light in the visible spectrum.
The astronomers believe the emission line was caused by the annihilation of electrons and their anti-matter counterparts, positrons. If their interpretation is correct, it means the particles would have to have been moving toward Earth at 99.9% the speed of light.
“After decades of studying these incredible cosmic explosions, we still don’t understand the details of how these jets work,” says Elizabeth Hays, Fermi project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in the US. “Finding clues like this remarkable emission line will help scientists investigate this extreme environment more deeply.”
My husband and I have five kids. Four are now adults and we have one still at home. We have raised wrestlers, football players, basketball players, and a softball player. We’ve had a cheerleader and two homecoming kings, but we never expected our last to hate sports and love theater. Let me tell you…it’s a breath of fresh air and I don’t have to take out special insurance riders for concussions and broken collar bones.
Our last kiddo is a theater kid and I love it.
I walked into my daughter’s yearly play performance a couple of days ago and saw a woman smiling at me as I passed. You have to remember that I am in a small town and if people know me, they also know my loud-mouth brand of politics, so I can be polarizing in person. If they know me, they like me or hate me. There’s no in-between.
So when I saw her smiling at me, I smiled back. Whew! She must be friendly. She said “Kamala” as I walked past. I turned back and said, “Kamala?” She responded with, “Yes, we Kam,” and her smile grew even bigger. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard.
Kamala.
That was the Friday night performance. My daughter also had a Saturday matinee. My husband and I sat closer to the stage for this one since we knew where to better see our kid as she sang and danced. As we sat down, a woman behind me said, “Jess!” I turned and she told me how much she appreciated me speaking out on rural issues. She held my hand as she told me how excited she was to hear Kamala would be the nominee. We talked for just a minute and I then turned back to see my husband scrolling Facebook marketplace as we waited for the play to begin…he’s always looking for a deal on an old car or a lawnmower. We need neither.
A couple of minutes passed when a former student (I adore her and her entire family) got my attention. Mrs. Piper! She introduced me to yet another woman who lives in my community and sat next to me nearly breathless in her excitement for the upcoming election. She asked how we could start organizing for 2024. How can we work to elect Crystal Quade as the first woman Governor of Missouri? How can we make sure abortion rights win on Missouri ballots? How can we organize in tiny Northwest Missouri to elect Kamala Harris?
Her eyes were clear and bright. She also held my hand while speaking. She and the other women were exhibiting something I had not seen in a long time…it looked like hope.
Adams County, Illinois.
I was asked to speak to a group of Democrats in Quincy, Illinois this week and I happily accepted. Quincy is a town just over the Mississippi River from Missouri. The landscape looks exactly like the corn and bean fields of Missouri, and it is just across the river, but I was suddenly bestowed with bodily autonomy and the rights of a first-class citizen as soon as I drove east across that muddy river.
“States’ Rights.”
The problem with driving several hours with only minutes to dress for an event? I am consistently dressing next to a toilet — changing out of my leggings or shorts and into a dress. I always hope for a stall with a hook to hang my things so I don’t have to drop my clothes onto a public bathroom floor. And, don’t even ask how I apply makeup while sitting on a toilet. I live a glamorous life, friend 😉
Anyway, I managed the toilet two-step and walked out ready to speak to a few people. The event organizer told me there are usually 50-60 people who attend.
As soon as folks started arriving for the event, I noticed it would be a bigger crowd than they had anticipated. The Adams County Dems had prepared enough food for 90 people — over and above what they hoped to host. They had over 100 show up. The organizer told me it was the biggest event they have had in years. I’d like to say it’s because people were there to hear me, but I know that’s not the case. People showed up because they were excited. They wanted to be around like-minded friends who are excited. They wanted to smile broadly and talk loudly. They wanted to hear others affirm what they felt.
They have hope.
I noticed a woman in a Kamala shirt…it had only been three days since Joe said he was stepping aside. I asked her if she had a Cricut machine in her basement. These folks are moving fast. Excitement.
I sat down at a table to eat my pulled pork sandwich before my talk and organizers from an abortion rights group were at the table already discussing the Plan B kits they send across the border to Missouri. One woman said they put together over 100 kits and sent them to bars in Missouri with a no-pay policy. If you need the kit, just walk in and ask. I was amazed at the work they are doing to help women in another state. My state. The first state to completely ban abortion after Roe fell.
Bless them.
The first speaker was a first-generation Mexican American who also served in the Army. He was fiery. He blew us away with his love of country and patriotism for a country that has not lived up to its potential. He reminded the audience that Democrats are patriots. That we are trying to live up to ideals that will pave the way for all to live freely in our country. He stands in the way of a Trump dictatorship.
I love to hear Dems remind us that the Republicans do not own patriotism or the flag. In fact, the leader of the Republican party is a shameful man who does not stand for American values. The audience came to their feet as he closed his message.
The next speaker was a young woman from rural Missouri. She is only 16, but she came with a speech that made me remember why Republicans want to ban books and ban the teaching of accurate history. She spoke of being a woman in a red state with an abortion ban. “Oh, to be a Woman.” She spoke of women activists and the suffrage movement. She is a woman of color and she spoke of the civil rights movement. She spoke of second-class citizenship and of her ability to see why politicians would want to oppress generations of women. Fear of our vote.
Republicans push fear while we move forward in hope.
And, this is where I should say something. Reader, you know I was in favor of Joe staying in the race, and this was the reason: Every time pundits and consultants spoke of Biden dropping out, they never named Kamala Harris. Her name did not appear on the lists for nomination, and I am not sure they would have ceded the nomination if Biden had not endorsed her as he did. If tens of thousands of us would not have immediately started donating and picking up the torch Joe had passed.
If we had not rallied behind the woman we hope to nominate for the presidency, I think we may have had another nominee and many Democrats would have felt the fracture in our party.
There is no fracture now. There is palpable hope and joy. Eyes are wide and clear and smiles abound. Folks hold my hand to tell me how excited they are to see where the party is going.
that’s sympathetic to conditions in my area. My sinuses are achy with this humidity here today, but the rest of the week will be blazingly (I hope not literally) hot, so I don’t want to jinx anything. I’m thankful for a house with AC, and good things to read. Enjoy!
Breaking Cat News by Georgia Dunn for July 28, 2024
TRIGGER WARNING: Contains disgusting descriptions of the nasty-ass Guinea Worm, though no photos. Do not Google the photos.
…
So this is very nice, former President Jimmy Carter — who is still alive and 99 years young, though in hospice — has succeeded in his decades-long goal to get Guinea Worm Disease cases down to zero before he dies. (Warning, the picture at that link is disgusting.) There have now been zero cases of Guinea Worm disease in the past three months, and there were only 14 last year. Extremely promising signs that maybe they are truly gone forever! If no more Guinea Worms burst through anybody’s flesh within the next nine months, then it’ll officially be the second disease eradicated by humanity after smallpox.
When the Carter Center started trying to take down big Guinea Worm back in 1988, more than 3.5 million people in Africa and India were suffering from it. And BOY WERE THEY SUFFERING, because while the worm won’t directly kill you, it is agonizing and SO RETCHINGLY GROSS. First, nasty-ass fucking worm larva gets into your guts through dirty drinking water. Then it grows in your stomach for a fucking year. And THEN, a fucking THREE-FOOT WORM POPS OUT OF YOUR SKIN which hurts like fucking hell, obviously. And there is no vaccine or cure, the only solution is to pull this FUCKING DISGUSTING WORM out of your fucking skin by winding it around a fucking STICK.
So it is not the glamorous kind of affliction that makes a good poster for a benefit concert or bake sale, or plays well on an ad with Sarah McLachlan playing in the background. But one fixed relatively simply, with clean drinking water. And so that is what sweet peanut-farming Jimmy worked at. His Carter Center partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and has been quietly toiling to eradicate many other un-glamorous diseases that no one in the year of our Lord 2024 should have to suffer from, including: poliomyelitis (a virus that paralyzes mostly children), mumps, rubella, lymphatic filariasis (aka elephantiasis, a roundworm transmitted by mosquitoes), cysticercosis (tapeworm infection), measles, river blindness, and yaws (a nasty spirochete bacteria that causes bursting lesions). (snip-More)
This is linked in a Substack I read. In and on its own merit, I’m bringing it here for people to take a look. I think it’ll be worthwhile. I wish that people in Yemen and refugees from Gaza and people in all troubled places had this opportunity, but there it is; we have this. Anyway, take a look, subscribe if you like, or pass it along, and send a good thought into the universe on behalf of parents and children and stopping war.
Becoming a mother amid war in Ukraine by Anastasiia Lapatina
Two days after the birth of my daughter, Russia launched one of its largest air attacks on Kyiv. It was terrifying, but also entirely expected, and that’s the worst part. Read on Substack
Genetics explains bizarre echidna and platypus stomachs
July 24, 2024 Imma Perfetto
Monotremes are weird animals. They’re famously the only mammals to lay eggs instead of live young.
But did you know that they also have bizarre stomachs more akin to some fish than other mammals?
Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) and short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus) gastric systems are abnormally small, and lack the glands for secreting enzymes and acidic juices.
Platypus even go without a pyloric sphincter – the ring of smooth muscle that acts like a valve to regulate the flow of partially digested food from the stomach to the small intestine. This makes it difficult to tell the different between the oesophagus and intestines!
Now, Australian researchers have pinpointed a single gene, the NK3 homeobox 2 (Nkx3.2), as the likely cause for all this weirdness. The gene probably became inactivated tens of millions of years ago in the most recent ancestor of modern monotremes.
“Work from our lab previously had shown that the platypus and echidna had lost the genetic instructions for proteins that break down food and secrete stomach acids, but to me this didn’t explain the drastic shift in their stomach anatomy relative to other animals,” says Jackson Dann, a PhD student at the University of Adelaide and lead author of a new study detailing the discovery in the journal Open Biology.
“Thanks to novel repositories of genetic data, and physical specimens we had at the lab, we were able to discover that Nkx3.2 wasn’t functional in monotremes and that this inactivating event contributed to the evolution of their unique body plans.”
Apart from monotremes, only some aquatic and semi-aquatic fishes have lost their stomachs over the course of their evolutionary past.
The Australian ghostshark (Callorhinchus milii), Japanese puffer (Takifugu rubripes), zebrafish (Danio rerio), and Japanese rice fish (Oryzias latipes) all lack the same hydrochloric acid and gastric enzyme genes as seen in monotremes.
Australian ghost fish (Callorhinchus milii). Credit: Hannah Smith (CC BY-NC 4.0)
“It’s likely there is some overarching ecological factor we’re missing as to why these species have lost their stomach,” says Dann.
“It’s otherwise surprising that we would see these drastic shifts in stomach anatomy in monotremes and then the next closely related species are loose groups of fish.”
Dann and co-authors suggest that if this was a trait associated with aquatic and semi-aquatic organisms, their evidence would support a semi-aquatic ancestor of the short-beaked echidna and platypus.
Subsequent adaptations to the echidna lineage would have then allowed them to become specialised for terrestrial environments.
According to Dann, the more we know about monotremes, the more we can appreciate their role in their ecosystems and celebrate their eccentricities.
He highlights ecology endeavours like EchidnaCSI, which is an Australia-wide citizen science project helping conserve wild echidnas.
“A better understanding of these unique and iconic species provides a significant contribution to Australian ecology and culture, they help us understand more about mammals, including ourselves,” says Dann.
Imma Perfetto
Scottie's Playtime 